[/left]hadn't bothered to stop to sweep up the
pieces. This is the gulf between universes, the chill deeps of space that
contain nothing but the occasional random molecule, a few lost comets and ...
... but a circle of blackness shifts slightly, the eye reconsiders perspective,
and what was apparently the awesome distance of interstellar wossname becomes a
world under darkness, its stars the lights of what will charitably be called
civilisation.
For, as the world tumbles lazily, it is revealed as the Discworld - flat,
circular, and carried through space on the back of four elephants who stand on
the back of Great A'tuin, the only turtle ever to feature on the
Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram, a turtle ten thousand miles long, dusted with the
frost of dead comets, meteor-pocked, albedo-eyed. No-one knows the reason for
all this, but it is probably quantum. Much that is weird could happen on a world
on the back of a turtle like that.
It's happening already.
The stars below are campfires, out in the desert, and the lights of remote
villages high in the forested mountains. Towns are smeared nebulae, cities are
vast constellations; the great sprawling city of Ankh-Morpork, for example,
glows like a couple of colliding galaxies.
But here, away from the great centres of population, where the Circle Sea meets
the desert, there is a line of cold blue fire. Flames as chilly as the slopes of
Hell roar towards the sky. Ghostly light flickers across the desert. The
pyramids in the ancient valley of the Djel are flaring their power into the
night.
The energy streaming up from their paracosmic peaks may, in chapters to come,
illuminate many mysteries: why tortoises hate philosophy, why too much religion
is bad for goats, and what it is that handmaidens actually do.
It will certainly show what our ancestors would be thinking if they were alive
today. People have often speculated about this. Would they approve of modern
society, they ask, would they marvel at present-day achievements? And of course
this misses a fundamental point. What our ancestors would really be thinking, if
they were alive today, is: 'Why is it so dark in here?'

In the cool of the river valley dawn the high priest Dios opened his eyes. He
didn't sleep these days. He couldn't remember when he last slept. Sleep was too
close to the other thing and, anyway, he didn't seem to need it. Just lying down
was enough - at least, just lying down here. The fatigue poisons dwindled away,
like everything else. For a while.
Long enough, anyway.
He swung his legs off the slab in the little chamber. With barely a conscious
prompting from his brain his right hand grasped the snake-entwined staff of
office. He paused to make another mark on the wall, pulled his robe around him
and stepped smartly down the sloping passage and out into the sunlight, the
words of the Invocation of the New Sun already lining up in his mind. The night
was forgotten, the day was ahead. There was much careful advice and guidance to
be given, and Dios existed only to serve.
Dios didn't have the oddest bedroom in the world. It was just the oddest bedroom
anyone has ever walked out of.

And the sun toiled across the sky.
Many people have wondered why. Some people think a giant dung beetle pushes it.
As explanations go it lacks a certain technical edge, and has the added drawback
that, as certain circumstances may reveal, it is possibly correct.
It reached sundown without anything particularly unpleasant happening to it[1],
and its dying rays chanced to shine in through a window in the city of
Ankh-Morpork and gleam off a mirror.
It was a full-length mirror. All assassins had a full-length mirror in their
rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them when you
were badly dressed.
Teppic examined himself critically. The outfit had cost him his last penny, and
was heavy on the black silk. It whispered as he moved. It was pretty good.
At least the headache was going. It had nearly crippled him all day; he'd been
in dread of having to start the run with purple spots in front of his eyes.
He sighed and opened the black box and took out his rings and slipped them on.
Another box held a set of knives of Klatchian steel, their blades darkened with
lamp black. Various cunning and intricate devices were taken from velvet bags
and dropped into pockets. A couple of long-bladed throwing tlingo's were slipped
into their sheaths inside his boots. A thin silk line and folding grapnel were
wound around his waist, over the chain-mail shirt. A blowpipe was attached to
its leather thong and dropped down his back under his cloak; Teppic pocketed a
slim tin container with an assortment of darts, their tips corked and their
stems braille-coded for ease of selection in the dark.
He winced, checked the blade of his rapier and slung the baldric over his right
shoulder, to balance the bag of lead slingshot ammunition. As an afterthought he
opened his sock drawer and took a pistol crossbow, a flask of oil, a roll of
lockpicks and, after some consideration, a punch dagger, a bag of assorted
caltraps and a set of brass knuckles.
Teppic picked up his hat and checked its lining for the coil of cheesewire. He
placed it on his head at a jaunty angle, took a last satisfied look at himself
in the mirror, turned on his heel and, very slowly, fell over.

It was high summer in Ankh-Morpork. In fact it was more than high. It was
stinking.
The great river was reduced to a lava-like ooze between Ankh, the city with the
better address, and Morpork on the opposite bank. Morpork was not a good
address. Morpork was twinned with a tar pit. There was not a lot that could be
done to make Morpork a worse place. A direct hit by a meteorite, for example,
would count as gentrification.
Most of the river bed was a honeycomb crust of cracked mud. Currently the sun
appeared to be a big copper gong nailed to the sky. The heat that had dried up
the river fried the city by day and baked it by night, curling ancient timbers,
turning the traditional slurry of the streets into a drifting, choking ochre
dust.
It wasn't Ankh-Morpork's proper weather. It was by inclination a city of mists
and drips, of slithers and chills. It sat panting on the crisping plains like a
toad on a firebrick. And even now, around midnight, the heat was stifling,
wrapping the streets like scorched velvet, searing the air and squeezing all the
breath out of it.
High in the north face of the Assassins' Guildhouse there was a click as a
window was pushed open.
Teppic, who had with considerable reluctance divested himself of some of the
heavier of his weapons, took a deep draught of the hot, dead air.
This was it.
This was the night.
They said you had one chance in two unless you drew old Mericet as examiner, in
which case you might as well cut your throat right at the start.
Teppic had Mericet for Strategy and Poison Theory every Thursday afternoon, and
didn't get along with him. The dormitories buzzed with rumours about Mericet,
the number of kills, the astonishing technique . . . He'd broken all the records
in his time. They said he'd even killed the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork. Not the
present one, that is. One of the dead ones.
Maybe it would be Nivor, who was fat and jolly and liked his food and did Traps
and Deadfalls on Tuesdays. Teppic was good at traps, and got on well with the
master. Or it could be the Kompt de Yoyo, who did Modern Languages and Music.
Teppic was gifted at neither, but the Kompt was a keen edificeer and liked boys
who shared his love of dangling by one hand high above the city streets.
He stuck one leg over the sill and unhitched his line and grapnel. He hooked the
gutter two floors up and slipped out of the window.
No assassin ever used the stairs.

In order to establish continuity with later events, this may be the time to
point out that the greatest mathematician in the history of the Discworld was
lying down and peacefully eating his supper.
It is interesting to note that, owing to this mathematician's particular
species, what he was eating for his supper was his lunch.

Gongs around the Ankh-Morpork sprawl were announcing midnight when Teppic crept
along the ornate parapet four storeys above Filigree Street, his heart pounding.

There was a figure outlined against the afterglow of the sunset. Teppic paused
alongside a particularly repulsive gargoyle to consider his options.
Fairly solid classroom rumour said that if he inhumed his examiner before the
test, that was an automatic pass. He slipped a Number Three throwing knife from
its thigh sheath and hefted it thoughtfully. Of course, any attempt, any overt
move which missed would attract immediate failure and loss of privileges[2].

The silhouette was absolutely still. Teppic's eyes swivelled to the maze of
chimneys, gargoyles, ventilator shafts, bridges and ladders that made up the
rooftop scenery of the city.
Right, he thought. That's some sort of dummy. I'm supposed to attack it and that
means he's watching me from somewhere else.
Will I be able to spot him? No.
On the other hand, maybe I'm meant to think it's a dummy. Unless he's thought of
that as well . . .
He found himself drumming his fingers on the gargoyle, and hastily pulled
himself together. What is the sensible course of action at this point?
A party of revellers staggered through a pool of light in the street far below.
Teppic sheathed the knife and stood up.
'Sir,' he said, 'I am here.'
A dry voice by his ear said, rather indistinctly, 'Very well.'
Teppic stared straight ahead. Mericet appeared in front of him, wiping grey dust
off his bony face. He took a length of pipe out of his mouth and tossed it
aside, then pulled a clipboard out of his coat. He was bundled up even in this
heat. Mericet was the kind of person who could freeze in a volcano.
'Ah,' he said, his voice broadcasting disapproval, 'Mr. Teppic. Well, well.'
'A fine night, sir,' said Teppic. The examiner gave him a chilly look,
suggesting that observations about the weather acquired an automatic black mark,
and made a note on his clipboard.
'We'll take a few questions first,' he said.
'As you wish, sir.'
'What is the maximum permitted length of a throwing knife?' snapped Mericet.
Teppic closed his eyes. He'd spent the last week reading nothing but The Cordat;
he could see the page now, floating tantalisingly just inside his eyelids - they
never ask you lengths and weights, students had said knowingly, they expect you
to bone up on the weights and lengths and throwing distances but they never-
Naked terror hotwired his brain and kicked his memory into gear. The page sprang
into focus.
'"Maximum length of a throwing knife may be ten finger widths, or twelve in wet
weather",' he recited. '"Throwing distance is-"
'Name three poisons acknowledged for administration by ear.' A breeze sprang up,
but it did nothing to cool the air; it just shifted the heat about.
'Sir, wasp agaric, Achorion purple and Mustick, sir,' said Teppic promptly.
'Why not spime?' snapped Mericet, fast as a snake. Teppic's jaw dropped open. He
floundered for a while, trying to avoid the gimlet gaze a few feet away from
him.
'S-sir, spime isn't a poison, sir,' he managed. 'It is an extremely rare
antidote to certain snake venoms, and is obtained-' He settled down a bit, more
certain of himself: all those hours idly looking through the old dictionaries
had paid off- 'is obtained from the liver of the inflatable mongoose, which-'
'What is the meaning of this sign?' said Mericet.
'- is found only in the...' Teppic's voice trailed off. He squinted down at the
complex rune on the card in Mericet's hand, and then stared straight past the
examiner's ear again.
'I haven't the faintest idea, sir,' he said. Out of the corner of his ear he
thought he heard the faintest intake of breath, the tiniest seed of a satisfied
grunt.
'But if it were the other way up, sir,' he went on, 'it would be thiefsign for
"Noisy dogs in this house
There was absolute silence for a moment. Then, right by his shoulder, the old
assassin's voice said, 'Is the killing rope permitted to all categories?'
'Sir, the rules call for three questions, sir,' Teppic protested.
'Ah. And that is your answer, is it?'
'Sir, no, sir. It was an observation, sir. Sir, the answer you are looking for
is that all categories may bear the killing rope, but only assassins of the
third grade may use it as one of the three options, sir.'
'You are sure of that, are you?'
'Sir.'
'You wouldn't like to reconsider?' You could have used the examiner's voice to
grease a wagon.
'Sir, no, sir.'
'Very well.' Teppic relaxed. The back of his tunic was sticking to him, chilly
with sweat.
'Now, I want you to proceed at your own pace towards the Street of
Book-keepers,' said Mericet evenly, 'obeying all signs and so forth. I will meet
you in the room under the gong tower at the junction with Audit Alley. And -
take this, if you please.'
He handed Teppic a small envelope.
Teppic handed over a receipt. Then Mericet stepped into the pool of shade beside
a chimney pot, and disappeared.
So much for the ceremony.
Teppic took a few deep breaths and tipped the envelope's contents into his hand.
It was a Guild bond for ten thousand Ankh-Morpork dollars, made out to 'Bearer'.
It was an impressive document, surmounted with the Guild seal of the
double-cross and the cloaked dagger.
Well, no going back now. He'd taken the money. Either he'd survive, in which
case of course he'd traditionally donate the money to the Guild's widows and
orphans fund, or it would be retrieved from his dead body. The bond looked a bit
dog-eared, but he couldn't see any bloodstains on it.
He checked his knives, adjusted his swordbelt, glanced behind him, and set off
at a gentle trot.
At least this was a bit of luck. The student lore said there were only half a
dozen routes used during the test, and on summer nights they were alive with
students tackling the roofs, towers, eaves and colls of the city. Edificing was
a keen inter-house sport in its own right; it was one of the few things Teppic
was sure he was good at - he'd been captain of the team that beat Scorpion House
in the Wallgame finals. And this was one of the easier courses.
He dropped lightly over the edge of the roof, landed on a ridge, ran easily
across the sleeping building, jumped a narrow gap on to the tiled roof of the
Young Men's Reformed-Cultists-of-the-Ichor-God-Bel-Shamharoth Association gym,
jogged gently over the grey slope, swarmed up a twelve foot wall without slowing
down, and vaulted on to the wide flat roof of the Temple of Blind Io.
A full, orange moon hung on the horizon. There was a real breeze up here, not
much, but as refreshing as a cold shower after the stifling heat of the streets.
He speeded up, enjoying the coolness on his face, and leapt accurately off the
end of the roof on to the narrow plank bridge that led across Tinlid Alley.
And which someone, in defiance of all probability, had removed.

At times like this one's past life flashes before one's eyes. . .

His aunt had wept, rather theatrically, Teppic had thought, since the old lady
was as tough as a hippo's instep. His father had looked stern and dignified,
whenever he could remember to, and tried to keep his mind free of beguiling
images of cliffs and fish. The servants had been lined up along the hall from
the foot of the main stairway, handmaidens on one side, eunuchs and butlers on
the other. The women bobbed a curtsey as he walked by, creating a rather nice
sine wave effect which the greatest mathematician on the Disc, had he not at
this moment been occupied by being hit with a stick and shouted at by a small
man wearing what appeared to be a nightshirt, might well have appreciated.
'But,' Teppic's aunt blew her nose, 'it's trade, after all.' His father patted
her hand. 'Nonsense, flower of the desert,' he said, 'it is a profession, at the
very least.'
'What is the difference?' she sobbed.
The old man sighed. 'The money, I understand. It will do him good to go out into
the world and make friends and have a few corners knocked off, and it will keep
him occupied and prevent him from getting into mischief.'
'But... assassination... he's so young, and he's never shown the least
inclination . . .' She dabbed at her eyes. 'It's not from our side of the
family,' she added accusingly. 'That brother-in-law of yours-
'Uncle Vyrt,' said his father.
'Going all over the world killing people!'

'I don't believe they use that word,' said his father. 'I think they prefer
words like conclude, or annul. Or inhume, I understand.'
'Inhume?'
'I think it's like exhume, O flooding of the waters, only it's before they bury
you.'
'I think it's terrible.' She sniffed. 'But I heard from Lady Nooni that only one
boy in fifteen actually passes the final exam. Perhaps we'd just better let him
get it out of his system.'
King Teppicymon XXVII nodded gloomily, and went by himself to wave goodbye to
his son. He was less certain than his sister about the unpleasantness of
assassination; he'd been reluctantly in politics for a long time, and felt that
while assassination was probably worse than debate it was certainly better than
war, which some people tended to think of as the same thing only louder. And
there was no doubt that young Vyrt always had plenty of money, and used to turn
up at the palace with expensive gifts, exotic suntans and thrilling tales of the
interesting people he'd met in foreign parts, in most cases quite briefly.
He wished Vyrt was around to advise. His majesty had also heard that only one
student in fifteen actually became an assassin. He wasn't entirely certain what
happened to the other fourteen, but he was pretty sure that if you were a poor
student in a school for assassins they did a bit more than throw the chalk at
you, and that the school dinners had an extra dimension of uncertainty.
But everyone agreed that the assassins' school offered the best all-round
education in the world. A qualified assassin should be at home in any company,
and able to play at least one musical instrument. Anyone inhumed by a graduate
of the Guild school could go to his rest satisfied that he had been annulled by
someone of taste and discretion.
And, after all, what was there for him at home? A kingdom two miles wide and one
hundred and fifty miles long, which was almost entirely under water during the
flood season, and threatened on either side by stronger neighbours who tolerated
its existence only because they'd be constantly at war if it wasn't there.
Oh, Djelibeybi[3] had been great once, when upstarts like Tsort and Ephebe were
just a bunch of nomads with their towels on their heads. All that remained of
those great days was the ruinously-expensive palace, a few dusty ruins in the
desert and - the pharaoh sighed - the pyramids. Always the pyramids.
His ancestors had been keen on pyramids. The pharaoh wasn't. Pyramids had
bankrupted the country, drained it drier than ever the river did. The only curse
they could afford to put on a tomb these days was 'Bugger Off'.
The only pyramids he felt comfortable about were the very small ones at the
bottom of the garden, built every time one of the cats died.
He'd promised the boy's mother.
He missed Artela. There'd been a terrible row about taking a wife from outside
the Kingdom, and some of her foreign ways had puzzled and fascinated even him.
Maybe it was from her he'd got the strange dislike of pyramids; in Djelibeybi
that was like disliking breathing. But he'd promised that Pteppic could go to
school outside the kingdom. She'd been insistent about that. 'People never learn
anything in this place,' she'd said. 'They only remember things.'
If only she'd remembered about not swimming in the river .
He watched two of the servants load Teppic's trunk on to the back of the coach,
and for the first time either of them could remember laid a paternal hand on his
son's shoulder.
In fact he was at a loss for something to say. We've never really had time to
get to know one another, he thought. There's so much I could have given him. A
few bloody good hidings wouldn't have come amiss.
'Urn,' he said. 'Well, my boy.'
'Yes, father?'
'This is, er, the first time you've been away from home by yourself'
'No, father. I spent last summer with Lord Fhem-pta-hem, you remember.'
'Oh, did you?' The pharaoh recalled the palace had seemed quieter at the time.
He'd put it down to the new tapestries.
'Anyway,' he said, 'you're a young man, nearly thirteen-'
'Twelve, father,' said Teppic patiently.
'Are you sure?'
'It was my birthday last month, father. You bought me a warming pan.'
'Did I? How singular. Did I say why?'
'No, father.' Teppic looked up at his father's mild, puzzled features. 'It was a
very good warming pan,' he added reassuringly. 'I like it a lot.'
'Oh. Good. Er.' His majesty patted his son's shoulder again, in a vague way,
like a man drumming his fingers on his desk while trying to think. An idea
appeared to occur to him.
The servants had finished strapping the trunk on to the roof of the coach and
the driver was patiently holding open the door.
'When a young man sets out in the world,' said his majesty uncertainly, 'there
are, well, it's very important that he remembers . . . The point is, that it is
a very big world after all, with all sorts. . . And of course, especially so in
the city, where there are many additional . . . ' He paused, waving one hand
vaguely in the air.
Teppic took it gently.
'It's quite all right, father,' he said. 'Dios the high priest explained to me
about taking regular baths, and not going blind.'
His father blinked at him.
'You're not going blind?' he said.
'Apparently not, father.'
'Oh. Well. Jolly good,' said the king. 'Jolly, jolly good. That is good news.'
'I think I had better be going, father. Otherwise I shall miss the tide.'
His majesty nodded, and patted his pockets.
'There was something. . . 'he muttered, and then tracked it down, and slipped a
small leather bag into Teppic's pocket. He tried the shoulder routine again.
'A little something,' he murmured. 'Don't tell your aunt. Oh, you can't, anyway.
She's gone for a lie-down. It's all been rather too much for her.'
All that remained then was for Teppic to go and sacrifice a chicken at the
statue of Khuft, the founder of Djelibeybi, so that his ancestor's guiding hand
would steer his footsteps in the world. It was only a small chicken, though, and
when Khuft had finished with it the king had it for lunch.
Djelibeybi really was a small, self-centred kingdom. Even its plagues were
half-hearted. All self-respecting river kingdoms have vast supernatural plagues,
but the best the Old Kingdom had been able to achieve in the last hundred years
was the Plague of Frog[4].

That evening, when they were well outside the delta of the Djel and heading
across the Circle Sea to Ankh-Morpork, Teppic remembered the bag and examined
its contents. With love, but also with his normal approach to things, his father
had presented him with a cork, half a tin of saddlesoap, a small bronze coin of
uncertain denomination, and an extremely elderly sardine.

It is a well-known fact that when one is about to die the senses immediately
become excruciatingly sharp and it has always been believed that this is to
enable their owner to detect any possible exit from his predicament other than
the obvious one.
This is not true. The phenomenon is a classical example of displacement
activity. The senses are desperately concentrating on anything apart from the
immediate problem - which in Teppic's case consisted of a broad expanse of
cobblestones some eighty feet away and closing - in the hope that it will go
away.

The trouble is that it soon will.
Whatever the reason, Teppic was suddenly acutely aware of things around him. The
way the moonlight glowed on the rooftops. The smell of fresh bread wafting from
a nearby bakery. The whirring of a cockchafer as it barrelled past his ear,
upwards. The sound of a baby crying, in the distance, and the bark of a dog. The
gentle rush of the air, with particular reference to its thinness and lack of
handholds.

There had been more than seventy of them enrolling that year. The Assassins
didn't have a very strenuous entrance examination; the school was easy to get
into, easy to get out of (the trick was to get out upright). The courtyard in
the centre of the Guild buildings was thronged with boys who all had two things
in common - overlarge trunks, which they were sitting on, and clothes that had
been selected for them to grow into, and which they were more or less sitting
in. Some optimists had brought weapons with them, which were confiscated and
sent home over the next few weeks.
Teppic watched them carefully. There were distinct advantages to being the only
child of parents too preoccupied with their own affairs to worry much about him,
or indeed register his existence for days at a time.
His mother, as far as he could remember, had been a pleasant woman and as
self-centred as a gyroscope. She'd liked cats. She didn't just venerate them -
everyone in the kingdom did that - but she actually liked them, too. Teppic knew
that it was traditional in river kingdoms to approve of cats, but he suspected
that usually the animals in question were graceful stately creatures; his
mother's cats were small, spitting, flat-headed, yellow-eyed maniacs.
His father spent a lot of time worrying about the kingdom and occasionally
declaring that he was a seagull, although this was probably from general
forgetfulness. Teppic had occasionally speculated about his own conception,
since his parents were rarely in the same frame of reference, let alone the same
state of mind.
But it had apparently happened and he was left to bring himself up on a trial
and error basis, mildly hindered and occasionally enlivened by a succession of
tutors. The ones hired by his father were best, especially on those days when he
was flying as high as he could, and for one glorious winter Teppic had as his
tutor an elderly ibis poacher who had in fact wandered into the royal gardens in
search of a stray arrow.
That had been a time of wild chases with soldiers, moonlight rambles in the dead
streets of the necropolis and, best of all, the introduction to the puntbow, a
fearsomely complicated invention which at considerable risk to its operators
could turn a slough full of innocent waterfowl into so much floating p\a226t\a233.
He'd also had the run of the library, including the locked shelves - the poacher
had several other skills to ensure gainful employment in inclement weather -
which had given him many hours of quiet study; he was particularly attached to
The Shuttered Palace, Translated from the Khalian by A Gentleman, with
Hand-Coloured Plates for the Connoisseur in A Strictly Limited Edition. It was
confusing but instructive and, when a rather fey young tutor engaged by the
priests tried to introduce him to certain athletic techniques favoured by the
classical Pseudopolitans, Teppic considered the suggestion for some time and
then floored the youth with a hatstand.
Teppic hadn't been educated. Education had just settled on him, like dandruff.
It started to rain, in the world outside his head. Another new experience. He'd
heard about it, of course, how water came down out of the sky in small bits. He
just hadn't expected there to be so much of it. It never rained in Djelibeybi.
Masters moved among the boys like damp and slightly scruffy blackbirds, but he
was eyeing a group of older students lolling near the pillared entrance to the
school. They also wore black - different colours of black.
That was his first introduction to the tertiary colours, the colours on the far
side of blackness, the colours that you get if you split blackness with an
eight-sided prism. They are also almost impossible to describe in a non-magical
environment, but if someone were to try they'd probably start by telling you to
smoke something illegal and take a good look at a starling's wing. The seniors
were critically inspecting the new arrivals.
Teppic stared at them. Apart from the colours, their clothes were cut off the
edge of the latest fashion, which was currently inclining towards wide hats,
padded shoulders, narrow waists and pointed shoes and gave its followers the
appearance of being very well-dressed nails.
I'm going to be like them, he told himself.
Although probably better dressed, he added.
He recalled Uncle Vyrt, sitting out on the steps overlooking the Djel on one of
his brief, mysterious visits. 'Satin and leather are no good. Or jewellery of
any kind. You can't have anything that will shine or squeak or clink. Stick to
rough silk or velvet. The important thing is not how many people you inhume,
it's how many fail to inhume you.'
He'd been moving at an unwise pace, which might assist now. As he arced over the
emptiness of the alley he twisted in the air, thrust out his arms desperately,
and felt his fingertips brush a ledge on the building opposite. It was enough to
pivot him; he swung around, hit the crumbling brickwork with sufficient force to
knock what remained of his breath out of him, and slid down the sheer wall.
[/left]

'Boy!'
Teppic looked up. There was a senior assassin standing beside him, with a purple
teaching sash over his robes. It was the first assassin he'd seen, apart from
Vyrt. The man was pleasant enough. You could imagine him making sausages.
'Are you talking to me?' he said.
'You will stand up when you address a master,' said the rosy face.
'I will?' Teppic was fascinated. He wondered how this could be achieved.
Discipline had not hitherto been a major feature in his life. Most of his tutors
had been sufficiently unnerved by the sight of the king occasionally perched on
top of a door that they raced through such lessons as they had and then locked
themselves in their rooms.
'I will sir,' said the teacher. He consulted the list in his hand.
'What is your name, boy?' he continued.
'Prince Pteppic of the Old Kingdom, the Kingdom of the Sun,' said Teppic easily.
'I appreciate you are ignorant of the etiquette, but you should not call me sir,
and you should touch the ground with your forehead when you address me.'
'Pateppic, is it?' said the master.
'No. Pteppic.'
'Ah. Teppic,' said the master, and ticked off a name on his list. He gave Teppic
a generous smile.
'Well, now, your majesty,' he said, 'I am Grunworth Nivor, your housemaster. You
are in Viper House. To my certain knowledge there are at least eleven Kingdoms
of the Sun on the Disc and, before the end of the week, you will present me with
a short essay detailing their geographical location, political complexion,
capital city or principal seat of government, and a suggested route into the
bed- chamber of the head of state of your choice. However, in all the world
there is only one Viper House. Good morning to you, boy.'
He turned away and homed in on another cowering pupil. 'He's not a bad sort,'
said a voice behind Teppic. 'Anyway, all the stuffs in the library. I'll show
you if you like. I'm Chidder.
Teppic turned. He was being addressed by a boy of about his own age and height,
whose black suit - plain black, for First Years - looked as though it had been
nailed on to him in bits. The youth was holding out a hand. Teppic gave it a
polite glance.
'Yes?' he said.
'What's your name, kiddo?'
Teppic drew himself up. He was getting fed up with this treatment. 'Kiddo? I'll
have you know the blood of pharaohs runs in my veins!'
The other boy looked at him unabashed, with his head on one side and a faint
smile on his face.
'Would you like it to stay there?' he said.

The baker was just along the alley, and a handful of the staff had stepped out
into the comparative cool of the pre-dawn air for a quick smoke and a break from
the desert heat of the ovens. Their chattering spiralled up to Teppic, high in
the shadows, gripping a fortuitous window sill while his feet scrabbled for a
purchase among the bricks.
It's not that bad, he told himself. You've tackled worse. The hubward face of
the Patrician's palace last winter, for example, when all the gutters had
overflowed and the walls were solid ice. This isn't much more than a 3, maybe a
3.2. You and old Chiddy used to go up walls like this rather than stroll down
the street, it's just a matter of perspective.
Perspective. He glanced down, at seventy feet of infinity. Splat City, man, get
a grip on yourself. On the wall. His right foot found a worn section of mortar,
into which his toes planted themselves with barely a conscious instruction from
a brain now feeling too fragile to take more than a distant interest in the
proceedings.
He took a breath, tensed, and then dropped one hand to his belt, seized a
dagger, and thrust it between the bricks beside him before gravity worked out
what was happening. He paused, panting, waiting for gravity to lose interest in
him again, and then swung his body sideways and tried the same thing a second
time.
Down below one of the bakers told a suggestive joke, and brushed a speck of
mortar from his ear. As his colleagues laughed Teppic stood up in the moonlight,
balancing on two slivers of Klatchian steel, and gently walked his palms up the
wall to the window whose sill had been his brief salvation.
It was wedged shut. A good blow would surely open it, but only at about the same
moment as it sent him reeling back into empty air. Teppic sighed and, moving
with the delicacy of a watchmaker, drew his diamond compasses from their pouch
and dragged a slow, gentle circle on the dusty glass...

'You carry it yourself,' said Chidder. 'That's the rule around here.'
Teppic looked at the trunk. It was an intriguing notion. 'At home we've people
who do that,' he said. 'Eunuchs and so on.
'You should of brought one with you.'
'They don't travel well,' said Teppic. In fact he'd adamantly refused all
suggestions that a small retinue should accompany him, and Dios had sulked for
days. That was not how a member of the royal blood should go forth into the
world, he said. Teppic had remained firm. He was pretty certain that assassins
weren't expected to go about their business accompanied by handmaidens and
buglers. Now, however, the idea seemed to have some merit. He gave the trunk an
experimental heave, and managed to get it across his shoulders.
'Your people are pretty rich, then?' said Chidder, ambling along beside him.
Teppic thought about this. 'No, not really,' he said. 'They mainly grow melons
and garlic and that kind of thing. And stand in the streets and shout "hurrah".'

'This is your parents you're talking about?' said Chidder, puzzled.
'Oh, them? No, my father's a pharaoh. My mother was a concubine. I think.'
'I thought that was some sort of vegetable.'
'I don't think so. We've never really discussed it. Anyway, she died when I was
young.
'How dreadful,' said Chidder cheerfully.
'She went for a moonlight swim in what turned out to be a crocodile.' Teppic
tried politely not to be hurt at the boy's reaction.
'My father's in commerce,' said Chidder, as they passed through the archway.
'That's fascinating,' said Teppic dutifully. He felt quite broken by all these
new experiences, and added, 'I've never been to Commerce, but I understand
they're very fine people.'
Over the next hour or two Chidder, who ambled gently through life as though he'd
already worked it all out, introduced Teppic to the various mysteries of the
dormitories, the classrooms and the plumbing. He left the plumbing until last,
for all sorts of reasons.
'Not any?' he said.
'There's buckets and things,' said Teppic vaguely, 'and lots of servants.'
'Bit old fashioned, this kingdom of yours?'
Teppic nodded. 'It's the pyramids,' he said. 'They take all the money.'
'Expensive things, I should imagine.'
'Not particularly. They're just made of stone.' Teppic sighed. 'We've got lots
of stone,' he said, 'and sand. Stone and sand. We're really big on them. If you
ever need any stone and sand, we're the people for you. It's fitting out the
insides that is really expensive. We're still avoiding paying for grandfather's,
and that wasn't very big. Just three chambers.' Teppic turned and looked out of
the window; they were back in the dormitory at this point.
'The whole kingdom's in debt,' he said, quietly. 'I mean even our debts are in
debt. That's why I'm here, really. Someone in our house needs to earn some
money. A royal prince can't hang around looking ornamental any more. He's got to
get out and do something useful in the community.'
Chidder leaned on the window sill.
'Couldn't you take some of the stuff out of the pyramids, then?' he said.
'Don't be silly.'
'Sorry.'
Teppic gloomily watched the figures below.
'There's a lot of people here,' he said, to change the subject. 'I didn't
realise it would be so big.' He shivered. 'Or so cold,' he added.
'People drop out all the time,' said Chidder. 'Can't stand the course. The
important thing is to know what's what and who's who. See that fellow over
there?'
Teppic followed his pointing finger to a group of older students, who were
lounging against the pillars by the entrance.
'The big one? Face like the end of your boot?'
'That's Fliemoe. Watch out for him. If he invites you for toast in his study,
don't go.'
'And who's the little kid with the curls?' said Teppic. He pointed to a small
lad receiving the attentions of a washed-out looking lady. She was licking her
handkerchief and dabbing apparent smudges off his face. When she stopped that,
she straightened his tie.
Chidder craned to see. 'Oh, just some new kid,' he said. 'Arthur someone. Still
hanging on to his mummy, I see. He won't last long.'
'Oh, I don't know,' said Teppic. 'We do, too, and we've lasted for thousands of
years.'

A disc of glass dropped into the silent building and tinkled on the floor. There
was no other sound for several minutes. Then there was the faint clonk-clonk of
an oil can. A shadow that had been lying naturally on the window sill, a morgue
for blue-bottles, turned out to be an arm which was moving with vegetable
slowness towards the window's catch.
There was a scrape of metal, and then the whole window swung out in tribological
silence.
Teppic dropped over the sill and vanished into the shadow below it.
For a minute or two the dusty space was filled with the intense absence of noise
caused by someone moving with extreme care. Once again there was the squirting
of oil, and then a metallic whisper as the bolt of a trapdoor leading on to the
roof moved gently aside.
Teppic waited for his breath to catch up with him, and in that moment heard the
sound. It was down among the white noise at the edge of hearing, but there was
no doubt about it. Someone was waiting just above the trapdoor, and they'd just
put their hand on a piece of paper to stop it rattling in the breeze.
His own hand dropped from the bolt. He eased his way with exquisite care back
across the greasy floor and felt his way along a rough wooden wall until he came
to the door. This time he took no chances, but uncorked his oil can and let a
silent drop fall on to the hinges.
A moment later he was through. A rat, idly patrolling the draughty passage
beyond, had to stop itself from swallowing its own tongue as he floated past.
There was another doorway at the end, and a maze of musty storerooms until he
found a stairway. He judged himself to be about thirty yards from the trapdoor.
There hadn't been any flues that he could see. There ought to be a clear shot
across the roof.
He hunkered down and pulled out his knife roll, its velvet blackness making a
darker oblong in the shadows. He selected a Number Five, not everyone's throwing
knife, but worthwhile if you had the trick of it.
Shortly afterwards his head rose very carefully over the edge of the roof, one
arm bent behind it but ready to uncurl in a complex interplay of forces that
would combine to send a few ounces of steel gliding across the night.
Mericet was sitting by the trapdoor, looking at his clipboard. Teppic's eyes
swivelled to the oblong of the plank bridge, stored meticulously against the
parapet a few feet away.
He was certain he had made no noise. He'd have to swear that the examiner heard
the sound of his gaze falling on him.
The old man raised his bald head.
'Thank you, Mr Teppic,' he said, 'you may proceed.'
Teppic felt the sweat of his body grow cold. He stared at the plank, and then at
the examiner, and then at his knife. 'Y's, sir,' he said. This didn't seem like
enough, in the circumstances. He added, 'Thank you, sir.'

He'd always remember the first night in the dormitory. It was long enough to
accommodate all eighteen boys in Viper House, and draughty enough to accommodate
the great outdoors. Its designer may have had comfort in mind, but only so that
he could avoid it wherever possible: he had contrived a room that could actually
be colder than the weather outside.
'I thought we got rooms to ourselves,' said Teppic.
Chidder, who had laid claim to the least exposed bed in the whole refrigerator,
nodded at him.
'Later on,' he said. He lay back, and winced. 'Do they sharpen these springs, do
you reckon?'
Teppic said nothing. The bed was in fact rather more comfortable than the one
he'd slept in at home. His parents, being high born, naturally tolerated
conditions for their children which would have been rejected out of hand by
destitute sandflies.
He stretched out on the thin mattress and analysed the day's events. He'd been
enrolled as an assassin, all right, a student assassin, for more than seven
hours and they hadn't even let him lay a hand on a knife yet. Of course,
tomorrow was another day . . .
Chidder leaned over.
'Where's Arthur?' he said.
Teppic looked at the bed opposite him. There was a pathetically small sack of
clothing positioned neatly in its centre, but no sign of its intended occupant.
'Do you think he's run away?' he said, staring around at the shadows.
'Could be,' said Chidder. 'It happens a lot, you know. Mummy's boys, away from
home for the first time-'
The door at the end of the room swung open slowly and Arthur entered, backwards,
tugging a large and very reluctant billy goat. It fought him every step of the
way down the aisle between the bedsteads.
The boys watched in silence for several minutes as he tethered the animal to the
end of his bed, upended the sack on the blankets, and took out several black
candles, a sprig of herbs, a rope of skulls, and a piece of chalk. Taking the
chalk, and adopting the shiny, pink-faced expression of someone who is going to
do what they know to be right no matter what, Arthur drew a double circle around
his bed and then, getting down on his chubby knees, filled the space between
them with as unpleasant a collection of occult symbols as Teppic. had ever seen.
When they were completed to his satisfaction he placed the candles at strategic
points and lit them; they spluttered and gave off a smell that suggested that
you really wouldn't want to know what they were made of. He drew a short,
red-handled knife from the jumble on the bed and advanced towards the goat-
A pillow hit him on the back of the head.
'Garn! Pious little bastard!'
Arthur dropped the knife and burst into tears. Chidder sat up in bed.
'That was you, Cheesewright!' he said. 'I saw you!' Cheesewright, a skinny young
man with red hair and a face that was one large freckle, glared at him.
'Well, it's too much,' he said. 'A fellow can't sleep with all this religion
going on. I mean, only little kids say their prayers at bedtime these days,
we're supposed to be learning to be assassins-'
'You can jolly well shut up, Cheesewright,' shouted Chidder. 'It'd be a better
world if more people said their prayers, you know. I know I don't say mine as
often as I should-'
A pillow cut him off in mid-sentence. He bounded out of bed and vaulted at the
red-haired boy, fists flailing.
As the rest of the dormitory gathered around the scuffling pair Teppic slid out
of bed and padded over to Arthur, who was sitting on the edge of his bed and
sobbing.
He patted him uncertainly on the shoulder, on the basis that this sort of thing
was supposed to reassure people.
'I shouldn't cry about it, youngster,' he said, gruffly.
'But - but all the runes have been scuffed,' said Arthur. 'It's all too late
now! And that means the Great Om will come in the night and wind out my entrails
on a stick!'
'Does it?'
'And suck out my eyes, my mother said!'
'Gosh!' said Teppic, fascinated. 'Really?' He was quite glad his bed was
opposite Arthur's, and would offer an unrivalled view. 'What religion would this
be?'
'We're Strict Authorised Ormits,' said Arthur. He blew his nose. 'I noticed you
don't pray,' he said. 'Don't you have a god?'
'Oh yes,' said Teppic hesitantly, 'no doubt about that.'
'You don't seem to want to talk to him.'
Teppic shook his head. 'I can't,' he said, 'not here. He wouldn't be able to
hear, you see.'
'My god can hear me anywhere,' said Arthur fervently.
'Well, mine has difficulty if you're on the other side of the room,' said
Teppic. 'It can be very embarrassing.'
'You're not an Offlian, are you?' said Arthur. Offler was a Crocodile God, and
lacked ears.
'No.'
'What god do you worship, then?'
'Not exactly worship,' said Teppic, discomforted. 'I wouldn't say worship. I
mean, he's all right. He's my father, if you must know.'
Arthur's pink-rimmed eyes widened.
'You're the son of a god?' he whispered.
'It's all part of being a king, where I come from,' said Teppic hurriedly. 'He
doesn't have to do very much. That is, the priests do the actual running of the
country. He just makes sure that the river floods every year, d'you see, and
services the Great Cow of the Arch of the Sky. Well, used to.'
'The Great-'
'My mother,' explained Teppic. 'It's all very embarrassing.'
'Does he smite people?'
'I don't think so. He's never said.'
Arthur reached down to the end of the bed. The goat, in the confusion, had
chewed through its rope and trotted out of the door, vowing to give up religion
in future.
'I'm going to get into awful trouble,' he said. 'I suppose you couldn't ask your
father to explain things to the Great OM?'
'He might be able to,' said Teppic doubtfully. 'I was going to write home
tomorrow anyway.
'The Great Orm is normally to be found in one of the Nether Hells,' said Arthur,
'where he watches everything we do. Everything I do, anyway. There's only me and
mother left now, and she doesn't do much that needs watching.'
'I'll be sure and tell him.'
'Do you think the Great Orm will come tonight?'
'I shouldn't think so. I'll ask my father to be sure and tell him not to.'
At the other end of the dormitory Chidder was kneeling on Cheesewright's back
and knocking his head repeatedly against the wall.
'Say it again,' he commanded. 'Come on - "There's nothing wrong-"'
'"There's nothing wrong with a chap being man enough-" curse you, Chidder, you
beastly-'
'I can't hear you, Cheesewright,' said Chidder.
'"Man enough to say his prayers in front of other chaps", you rotter.'
'Right. And don't you forget it.'
After lights out Teppic lay in bed and thought about religion. It was certainly
a very complicated subject.
The valley of the Djel had its own private gods, gods which had nothing to do
with the world outside. It had always been very proud of the fact. The gods were
wise and just and regulated the lives of men with skill and foresight, there was
no question about that, but there were some puzzles.
For example, he knew his father made the sun come up and the river flood and so
on. That was basic, it was what the pharaohs had done ever since the time of
Khuft, you couldn't go around questioning things like that. The point was,
though, did he just make the sun come up in the Valley or everywhere in the
world? Making the sun come up in the Valley seemed a more reasonable
proposition, after all, his father wasn't getting any younger, but it was rather
difficult to imagine the sun coming up everywhere else and not the Valley, which
led to the distressing thought that the sun would come up even if his father
forgot about it, which was a very likely state of affairs. He'd never seen his
father do anything much about making the sun rise, he had to admit. You'd expect
at least a grunt of effort round about the dawn. His father never got up until
after breakfast. The sun came up just the same.
He took some time to get to sleep. The bed, whatever Chidder said, was too soft,
the air was too cold and, worst of all, the sky outside the high windows was too
dark. At home it would have been full of flarelight from the necropolis, its
silent flames eerie but somehow familiar and comforting, as though the ancestors
were watching over their valley. He didn't like the darkness.
The following night in the dormitory one of the boys from further along the
coast shyly tried to put the boy in the next bed inside a wickerwork cage he
made in Craft and set fire to him, and the night after that Snoxall, who had the
bed by the door and came from a little country out in the forests somewhere,
painted himself green and asked for volunteers to have their intestines wound
around a tree. On Thursday a small war broke out between those who worshipped
the Mother Goddess in her aspect of the Moon and those who worshipped her in her
aspect of a huge fat woman with enormous buttocks. After that the masters
intervened and explained that religion, while a fine thing, could be taken too
far.

Teppic had a suspicion that unpunctuality was unforgivable. But surely Mericet
would have to be at the tower ahead of him? And he was going by the direct
route. The old man couldn't possibly get there before him. Mind you, he couldn't
possibly have got to the bridge in the alley first . . . He must have taken the
bridge away before he met me and then he climbed up on the roof while I was
climbing up the wall, Teppic told himself, without believing a word of it.
He ran along a roof ridge, senses alert for dislodged tiles or tripwires. His
imagination equipped every shadow with watching figures.
The gong tower loomed ahead of him. He paused, and looked at it. He had seen it
a thousand times before, and scaled it many times although it barely rated a
1.8, notwithstanding that the brass dome on top was an interesting climb. It was
just a familiar landmark. That made it worse now; it bulked in front of him, a
stubby menacing shape against the greyness of the sky.
He advanced more slowly now, approaching the tower obliquely across the sloping
roof. It came to him that his initials were there, on the dome, along with
Chiddy's and those of hundreds of other young assassins, and that they'd carry
on being up there even if he died tonight. It was sort of comforting. Only not
very.
He unslung his rope and made an easy throw on to the wide parapet that ran
around the tower, just under the dome. He tested it, and heard the gentle clink
as it caught.
Then he tugged it as hard as possible, bracing himself with one foot on a
chimney stack.
Abruptly, and with no sound, a section of parapet slid outwards and dropped.
There was a crash as it hit the roof below and then slid down the tiles. Another
pause was punctuated by a distant thump as it hit the silent street. A dog
barked.
Stillness ruled the rooftops. Where Teppic had been the breeze stirred the
burning air.
After several minutes he emerged from the deeper shadow of a chimney stack,
smiling a strange and terrible smile.
Nothing the examiner could do could possibly be unfair. An assassin's clients
were invariably rich enough to pay for extremely ingenious protection, up to and
including hiring assassins of his own[5]. Mericet wasn't trying to kill him; he
was merely trying to make him kill himself.
He sidled up to the base of the tower and found a drainpipe. It hadn't been
coated with slipall, rather to his surprise, but his gently questing fingers did
find the poisoned needles painted black and glued to the inner face of the pipe.
He removed one with his tweezers and sniffed it.
Distilled bloat. Pretty expensive stuff, with an astonishing effect. He took a
small glass phial from his belt and collected as many needles as he could find,
and then put on his armoured gloves and, with the speed of a sloth, started to
climb.

'Now it may well be that, as you travel across the city on your lawful
occasions, you will find yourselves in opposition to fellow members, even one of
the gentlemen with whom you are currently sharing a bench. And this is quite
right and /what are you doing Mr Chidder no don 't tell me I'm sure I wouldn't
want to know see me afterwards/ proper. It is open to everyone to defend
themselves as best they may. There are, however, other enemies who will dog your
steps and against whom you are all ill-prepared /who are they Mr Cheesewright?'/

Mericet spun round from his blackboard like a vulture who has just heard a
death-rattle and pointed the chalk at Cheesewright, who gulped.
'Thieves' Guild, sir?' he managed.
'Step out here, boy.'
There were whispered rumours in the dormitories about what Mericet had done to
slovenly pupils in the past, which. were always vague but horrifying. The class
relaxed. Mericet usually concentrated on one victim at a time, so all they had
to do now was look keen and enjoy the show. Crimson to his ears, Cheesewright
got to his feet and trooped down the aisle between the desks.
The master inspected him thoughtfully.
'Well, now,' he said, 'and here we have Cheesewright, G., skulking across the
quaking rooftops. See the determined ears. See the firm set of those knees.'
The class tittered dutifully. Cheesewright gave them an idiotic grin and rolled
his eyes.
'But what are these sinister figures that march in step with him, hey? /Since
you find this so funny, Mr Teppic, perhaps you would be so good as to tell Mr
Cheesewright?'/
Teppic froze in mid-laugh.
Mericet's gaze bored into him. He's just like Dios the high priest, Teppic
thought. Even father's frightened of Dios.
He knew what he ought to do, and he was damned if he was going to do it. He
ought to be scared.
'Ill-preparedness,' he said. 'Carelessness. Lack of concentration. Poor
maintenance of tools. Oh, and over-confidence, sir.'
Mericet held his gaze for some time, but Teppic had practised on the palace
cats.
Finally the teacher gave a brief smile that had absolutely nothing to do with
humour, tossed the chalk in the air, caught it again, and said: 'Mr Teppic is
exactly right. Especially about the over-confidence.'

There was a ledge leading to an invitingly open window. There was oil on the
ledge, and Teppic invested several minutes in screwing small crampons into
cracks in the stonework before advancing.
He hung easily by the window and proceeded to take a number of small metal rods
from his belt. They were threaded at the ends, and after a few seconds' brisk
work he had a rod about three feet long on the end of which he affixed a small
mirror.
That revealed nothing in the gloom beyond the opening. He pulled it back and
tried again, this time attaching his hood into which he'd stuffed his gloves, to
give the impression of a head cautiously revealing itself against the light. He
was confident that it would pick up a bolt or a dart, but it remained resolutely
unattacked.
He was chilly now, despite the heat of the night. Black velvet looked good, but
that was about all you could say for it. The excitement and the exertion meant
he was now wearing several pints of clammy water.
He advanced.
There was a thin black wire on the window sill, and a serrated blade screwed to
the sash window above it. It was the work of a moment to wedge the sash with
more rods and then cut the wire; the window dropped a fraction of an inch. He
grinned in the darkness.
A sweep with a long rod inside the room revealed that there was a floor,
apparently free of obstructions. There was also a wire at about chest height. He
drew the rod back, affixed a small hook on the end, sent it back, caught the
wire, and tugged.
There came the dull smack of a crossbow bolt hitting old plaster.
A lump of clay on the end of the same rod, pushed gently across the floor,
revealed several caltraps. Teppic hauled them back and inspected them with
interest. They were copper. If he'd tried the magnet technique, which was the
usual method, he wouldn't have found them.
He thought for a while. He had slip-on priests in his pouch. They were devilish
things to prowl around a room in, but he shuffled into them anyway. (Priests
were metal-reinforced overshoes. They saved your soles. This is an Assassin
joke.) Mericet was a poisons man, after all. Bloat! If he tipped them with that
Teppic would plate himself all over the walls. They wouldn't need to bury him,
they'd just redecorate over the top.[6]
The rules. Mericet would have to obey the rules. He couldn't simply kill him,
with no warning. He'd have to let him, by carelessness or over-confidence, kill
himself.
He dropped lightly on to the floor inside the room and let his eyes adjust to
the darkness. A few exploratory swings with the rods detected no more wires;
there was a faint crunch underfoot as a priest crushed a caltrap.
'In your own time, Mr Teppic.'
Mericet was standing in a corner. Teppic heard the faint scratching of his
pencil as he made a note. He tried to put the man out of his mind. He tried to
think.
There was a figure lying on a bed. It was entirely covered by a blanket.
This was the last bit. This was the room where everything was decided. This was
the bit the successful students never told you about. The unsuccessful ones
weren't around to ask.
Teppic's mind filled up with options. At a time like this, he thought, some
divine guidance would be necessary. Where are you, dad?'
He envied his fellow students who believed in gods that were intangible and
lived a long way away on top of some mountain. A fellow could really believe in
gods like that. But it was extremely hard to believe in a god when you saw him
at breakfast every day.
He unslung his crossbow and screwed its greased sections together. It wasn't a
proper weapon, but he'd run out of knives and his lips were too dry for the
blowpipe.
There was a clicking from the corner. Mericet was idly tapping his teeth with
his pencil.
It could be a dummy under there. How would he know? No, it had to be a real
person. You heard tales. Perhaps he could try the rods- He shook his head,
raised the crossbow, and took careful aim.
'Whenever you like Mr Teppic.'
This was it.
This was where they found out if you could kill.
This was what he had been trying to put out of his mind.
He knew he couldn't.

Octeday afternoons was Political Expediency with Lady T'malia, one of the few
women to achieve high office in the Guild. In the lands around the Circle Sea it
was generally agreed that one way to achieve a long life was not to have a meal
with her Ladyship. The jewellery of one hand alone carried enough poison to
inhume a small town. She was stunningly beautiful, but with the kind of
calculated beauty that is achieved by a team of skilled artists, manicurists,
plasterers, corsetiers and dressmakers and three hours' solid work every
morning. When she walked there was a faint squeak of whalebone under incredible
stress.
The boys were learning. As she talked they didn't watch her figure. They watched
her fingers.
'And thus,' she said, 'let us consider the position before the founding of the
Guild. In this city, and indeed in many places elsewhere, civilisation is
nurtured and progresses by the dynamic interplay of interests among many large
and powerful advantage cartels.
'In the days before the founding of the Guild the seeking of advancement among
these consortia invariably resulted in regrettable disagreements which were
terminated with extreme prejudice. These were extremely deleterious to the
common interest of the city. Please understand that where disharmony rules,
commerce flags.
'And yet, and yet.' She clasped her hands to her bosom. There was a creak like a
galleon beating against a gale.
'Clearly there was a need for an extreme yet responsible means of settling
irreconcilable differences,' she went on, 'and thus was laid the groundwork for
the Guild. What bliss - ' the sudden peak in her voice guiltily jerked several
dozen young men out of their private reveries - 'it must have been to have been
present in those early days, when men of stout moral purpose set out to forge
the ultimate political tool short of warfare. How fortunate you are now, in
training for a guild which demands so much in terms of manners, deportment,
bearing and esoteric skills, and yet offers a power once the preserve only of
the gods. Truly, the world is the mollusc of your choice . . .
Chidder translated much of this behind the stables during the dinner break.
'I know what Terminate with Extreme Prejudice means,' said Cheesewright loftily.
'It means to inhume with an axe.
'It bloody well doesn't,' said Chidder.
'How do you know, then?'
'My family have been in commerce for years,' said Chidder.
'Huh,' said Cheesewright. 'Commerce.'
Chidder never went into details about what kind of commerce it was. It had
something to do with moving items around and supplying needs, but exactly what
items and which needs was never made clear.
After hitting Cheesewright he explained carefully that Terminate with Extreme
Prejudice did not simply require that the victim was inhumed, preferably in an
extremely thorough way, but that his associates and employees were also
intimately involved, along with the business premises, the building, and a large
part of the surrounding neighbourhood, so that everyone involved would know that
the man had been unwise enough to make the kind of enemies who could get very
angry and indiscriminate.
'Gosh,' said Arthur.
'Oh, that's nothing,' said Chidder, 'one Hogswatchnight my grandad and his
accounts department went and had a high-level business conference with the
Hubside people and fifteen bodies were never found. Very bad, that sort of
thing. Upsets the business community.'
'All the business community, or just that part of it floating face down in the
river?' said Teppic.
'That's the point. Better it should be like this,' said Chidder, shaking his
head. 'You know. Clean. That's why my father said I should join the Guild. I
mean, you've got to get on with the business these days, you can't spend your
whole time on public relations.'

The end of the crossbow trembled.
He liked everything else about the school, the climbing, the music studies, the
broad education. It was the fact that you ended up killing people that had been
preying on his mind. He'd never killed anyone.
That's the whole point, he told himself. This is where everyone finds out if you
can, including you.
If I get it wrong now, I'm dead.
In his corner, Mericet began to hum a discouraging little tune.
There was a price the Guild paid for its licence. It saw to it that there were
no careless, half-hearted or, in a manner of speaking, murderously inefficient
assassins. You never met anyone who'd failed the test.
People did fail. You just never met them. Maybe there was one under there, maybe
it was Chidder, even, or Snoxall or any one of the lads. They were all doing the
run this evening. Maybe if he failed he'd be bundled under there.
Teppic tried to sight on the recumbent figure.
'Ahem,' coughed the examiner.
His throat was dry. Panic rose like a drunkard's supper.
His teeth wanted to chatter. His spine was freezing, his clothes a collection of
damp rags. The world slowed down. No. He wasn't going to. The sudden decision
hit him like a brick in a dark alley, and was nearly as surprising. It wasn't
that he hated the Guild, or even particularly disliked Mericet, but this wasn't
the way to test anyone. It was just wrong.
He decided to fail. Exactly what could the old man do about it, here?
And he'd fail with flair.
He turned to face Mericet, looked peacefully into the examiner's eyes, extended
his crossbow hand in some vague direction to his right, and pulled the trigger.
There was a metallic twang.
There was a click as the bolt ricocheted off a nail in the window sill. Mericet
ducked as it whirred over his head. It hit a torch bracket on the wall, and went
past Teppic's white face purring like a maddened cat.
There was a thud as it hit the blanket, and then silence.
'Thank you, Mr Teppic. If you could bear with me just one moment.'
The old assassin pored over his clipboard, his lips moving. He took the pencil,
which dangled from it by a bit of frayed string, and made a few marks on a piece
of pink paper.
'I will not ask you to take it from my hands,' he said, 'what with one thing and
another. I shall leave it on the table by the door.'
It wasn't a particularly pleasant smile: it was thin and dried-up, a smile with
all the warmth long ago boiled out of it; people normally smiled like that when
they had been dead for about two years under the broiling desert sun. But at
least you felt he was making the effort.
Teppic hadn't moved. 'I've passed?' he said.
'That would appear to be the case.'
'But-'
'I am sure you know that we are not allowed to discuss the test with pupils.
However, I can tell you that I personally do not approve of these modern flashy
techniques. Good morning to you.' And Mericet stalked out.
Teppic tottered over to the dusty table by the door and looked down, horrified,
at the paper. Sheer habit made him extract a pair of tweezers from his pouch in
order to pick it up.
It was genuine enough. There was the seal of the Guild on it, and the crabbed
squiggle that was undoubtedly Mericet's signature; he'd seen it often enough,
generally at the bottom of test papers alongside comments like 3/10. See me.
He padded over to the figure on the bed and pulled back the blanket.

It was nearly one in the morning. Ankh-Morpork was just beginning to make a
night of it.
It had been dark up above the rooftops, in the aerial world of thieves and
assassins. But down below the life of the city flowed through the streets like a
tide.
Teppic walked through the throng in a daze. Anyone else who tried that in the
city was asking for a guided tour of the bottom of the river, but he was wearing
assassin's black and the crowd just automatically opened in front of him and
closed behind. Even the pickpockets kept away. You never knew what you might
find. He wandered aimlessly through the gates of the Guild House and sat down on
a black marble seat, with his chin on his knuckles.
The fact was that his life had come to an end. He hadn't thought about what was
going to happen next. He hadn't dared to think that there was going to be a
next.
Someone tapped him on the shoulder. As he turned, Chidder sat down beside him
and wordlessly produced a slip of pink paper.
'Snap,' he said.
'You passed too?' said Teppic.
Chidder grinned. 'No problem,' he said. 'It was Nivor. No problem. He gave me a
bit of trouble on the Emergency Drop, though. How about you?'
'Hmm? Oh. No.' Teppic tried to get a grip on himself. 'No trouble,' he said.
'Heard from any of the others?'
'No.'
Chidder leaned back. 'Cheesewright will make it,' he said loftily, 'and young
Arthur. I don't think some of the others will. We could give them twenty
minutes, what do you say?'
Teppic turned an agonised face towards him.
'Chiddy, I-
'What?'
'When it came to it, I-
"What about it?'
Teppic looked at the cobbles. 'Nothing,' he said.
'You're lucky - you just had a good airy run over the rooftops. I had the sewers
and then up the garderobe in the Haberdashers' Tower. I had to go in and change
when I got here.'
'You had a dummy, did you?' said Teppic.
'Good grief, didn't you?'
'But they let us think it was going to be real!' Teppic wailed.
'It felt real, didn't it?'
'Yes!'
'Well, then. And you passed. So no problem.'
'But didn't you wonder who might be under the blanket, who it was, and why-
'I was worried that I might not do it properly,' Chidder admitted. 'But then I
thought, well, it's not up to me.'
'But I- ' Teppic stopped. What could he do? Go and explain? Somehow that didn't
seem a terribly good idea.
His friend slapped him on the back.
'Don't worry about it!' he said. 'We've done it!'
And Chidder held up his thumb pressed against the first two fingers of his right
hand, in the ancient salute of the assassins.

A thumb pressed against two fingers, and the lean figure of Dr Cruces, head
tutor, looming over the startled boys. 'We do not murder,' he said. It was a
soft voice; the doctor never raised his voice, but he had a way of giving it the
pitch and spin that could make it be heard through a hurricane. 'We do not
execute. We do not massacre. We never, you may be very certain, we never
torture. We have no truck with crimes of passion or hatred or pointless gain. We
do not do it for a delight in inhumation, or to feed some secret inner need, or
for petty advantage or for some cause or belief; I tell you, gentlemen, that all
these reasons are in the highest degree suspect. Look into the face of a man who
will kill you for a belief and your nostrils will snuff up the scent of
abomination. Hear a speech declaring a holy war and, I assure you, your ears
should catch the click of evil's scales and the dragging of its monstrous tail
over the purity of the language.
'No, we do it for the money.
'And, because we above all must know the value of a human life, we do it for the
a great deal of money.
'There can be few cleaner motives, so shorn of all pretence.
'Nil mortifi, sine lucre. Remember. No killing without payment.'
He paused for a moment.
'And always give a reciept,' he added.

'So it's all okay,' said Chidder. Teppic nodded gloomily. That was what was so
likeable about Chidder. He had this enviable ability to avoid thinking seriously
about anything he did.
A figure approached cautiously through the open gates.[7]
The light from the torch in the porters' lodge glinted off blond curly hair.
'You two made it, then,' said Arthur, nonchalantly flourishing the slip.
Arthur had changed quite a lot in seven years. The continuing failure of the
Great Orm to wreak organic revenge for lack of piety had cured him of his
tendency to run everywhere with his coat over his head. His small size gave him
a natural advantage in those areas of the craft involving narrow spaces. His
innate aptitude for channelled violence had been revealed on the day when
Fliemoe and some cronies had decided it would be fun to toss the new boys in a
blanket, and picked Arthur first; ten seconds later it had taken the combined
efforts of every boy in the dormitory to hold Arthur back and prise the remains
of the chair from his fingers. It had transpired that he was the son of the late
Johan Ludorum, one of the greatest assasins in the history of the Guild. Sons of
dead assasins always got a free scholarship. Yes, it could be a caring
profession at times.
There hadn't been any doubt about Arthur passing. He'd been given extra tuition
and was allowed to use really complicated poisons. He was probably going to stay
on for post-graduate work.
They waited until the gongs of the city struck two. Clock work was not a precise
technology in Ankh-Morpork, and many of the city's variuos communities had their
own ideas of what constituted an hour in any case, so the chimes went on
bouncing around the rooftops for five minutes.
When it was obvious that the city's consensus was in favour of it being well
past two the three of them stopped looking silently at their shoes.
'Well, that's it,' said Chidder.
'Poor old Cheesewright,' said Arthur. 'It's tragic, when you think about it.'
'Yes, he owed me fourpence,' agreed Chidder. 'Come on. I've arranged something
for us.'

King Teppicymon XXVII got out of bed and clapped his hands over his ears to shut
out the roar of the sea. It was strong tonight.
It was always louder when he was feeling out of sorts. He needed something to
distract himself. He could send for Ptraci, his favourite handmaiden. She was
special. Her singing always cheered him up. Life seemed so much brighter when
she stopped.
Or there was the sunrise. That was always comforting. It was pleasant to sit
wrapped in a blanket on the topmost roof of the palace, watching the mists lift
from the river as the golden flood poured over the land. You got that warm,
contented feeling of another job well done. Even if you didn't actually know how
you'd done it . . .
He got up, shuffled on his slippers, and padded out of his bedroom and down the
wide corridor that led to the huge spiral stairs and the roof. A few rushlights
illuminated the statues of the other local gods, painting the walls with
shifting shadow pictures of things dog-headed, fish-bodied, spider-armed. He'd
known them since childhood. His juvenile nightmares would have been quite
formless without them.
The sea. He'd only seen it once, when he was a boy. He couldn't recall a lot
about it, except the size. And the noise. And the seagulls.
They'd preyed on his mind. They seemed to have it far better worked out,
seagulls. He wished he could come back as one, one day, but of course that
wasn't an option if you were a pharaoh. You never came back. You didn't exactly
go away, in fact.

'Well, what is it?' said Teppic.
'Try it,' said Chidder, 'just try it. You'll never have the chance again.'
'Seems a shame to spoil it,' said Arthur gallantly looking down at the delicate
pattern on his plate. 'What are all the little red things?'
'They're just radishes,' said Chidder dismissively. 'They're not the important
part. Go on.'
Teppic reached over with the little wooden fork and skewered a paper-thin sliver
of white fish. The squishi chef was scrutinising him with the air of one
watching a toddler on his first birthday. So, he realised, was the rest of the
restaurant.
He chewed it carefully. It was salty and faintly rubbery, with a hint of sewage
outfall.
'Nice?' said Chidder anxiously. Several nearby diners started to clap.
'Different,' Teppic conceded, chewing. 'What is it?'
'Deep sea blowfish,' said Chidder.
'It's all right,' he said hastily as Teppic laid down his fork meaningfully,
'it's perfectly safe provided every bit of stomach, liver and digestive tract is
removed, that's why it cost so much, there's no such thing as a second-best
blowfish chef, it's the most expensive food in the world, people write poems
about it-'
'Could be a taste explosion,' muttered Teppic, getting a grip on himself. Still,
it must have been done properly, otherwise the place would now be wearing him as
wallpaper. He poked carefully at the sliced roots which occupied the rest of the
plate.
'What do these do to you?' he said.
'Well, unless they're prepared in exactly the right way over a six-week period
they react catastrophically with your stomach acids,' said Chidder. 'Sorry. I
thought we should celebrate with the most expensive meal we could afford.'
'I see. Fish and chips for Men,' said Teppic.
'Do they have any vinegar in this place?' said Arthur, his mouth full. 'And some
mushy peas would go down a treat.'
But the wine was good. Not incredibly good, though. Not one of the great
vintages. But it did explain why Teppic had gone through the whole of the day
with a headache.
It had been the hangunder. His friend had bought four bottles of otherwise quite
ordinary white wine. The reason it was so expensive was that the grapes it was
made from hadn't actually been planted yet.[8]

Light moves slowly, lazily on the Disc. It's in no hurry to get anywhere. Why
bother? At lightspeed, everywhere is the same place.
King Teppicymon XXVII watched the golden disc float over the edge of the world.
A flight of cranes took off from the mist-covered river.
He'd been conscientious, he told himself. No-one had ever explained to him how
one made the sun come up and the river flood and the corn grow. How could they?
He was the god, after all. He should know. But he didn't, so he'd just gone
through life hoping like hell that it would all work properly, and that seemed
to have done the trick. The trouble was, though, that if it didn't work, he
wouldn't know why not. A recurrent nightmare was of Dios the high priest shaking
him awake one morning, only it wouldn't be a morning, of course, and of every
light in the palace burning and an angry crowd muttering in the star-lit
darkness outside and everyone looking expectantly at him..
And all he'd be able to say was, 'Sorry'.
It terrified him. How easy to imagine the ice forming on the river, the eternal
frost riming the palm trees and snapping off the leaves (which would smash when
they hit the frozen ground) and the birds dropping lifeless from the sky
Shadow swept over him. He looked up through eyes misted with tears at a grey and
empty horizon, his mouth dropping open in horror.
He stood up, flinging aside the blanket, and raised both hands in supplication.
But the sun had gone. He was the god, this was his job, it was the only thing he
was here to do, and he had failed the people.
Now he could hear in his mind's ear the anger of the crowd, a booming roar that
began to fill his ears until the rhythm became insistent and familiar, until it
reached the point where it pressed in no longer but drew him out, into that
salty blue desert where the sun always shone and sleek shapes wheeled across the
sky.
The pharaoh raised himself on his toes, threw back his head, spread his wings.
And leapt.
As he soared into the sky he was surprised to hear a thump behind him. And the
sun came out from behind the clouds.
Later on, the pharaoh felt awfully embarrassed about it.

The three new assassins staggered slowly along the street, constantly on the
point of falling over but never quite reaching it, trying to sing 'A Wizard's
Staff Has A Knob On The End' in harmony or at least in the same key.
'Tis big an' i'ss round an' weighs three to the-' sang Chidder. 'Blast, what've
I stepped in?'
'Anyone know where we are?' said Arthur.
'We - we were headed for the Guildhouse,' said Teppic, 'only must of took the
wrong way, that's the river up ahead. Can smell it.'
Caution penetrated Arthur's armour of alcohol.
'Could be dangerous pep - plep - people around, this time o' night,' he
hazarded.
'Yep,' said Chidder, with satisfaction, 'us. Got ticket to prove it. Got test
and everything. Like to see anyone try anything with us.'
'Right,' agreed Teppic, leaning against him for support of a sort. 'We'll slit
them from wossname to thingy.'
'Right!'
They lurched uncertainly out on to the Brass Bridge.
In fact there were dangerous people around in the pre-dawn shadows, and
currently these were some twenty paces behind them.
The complex system of criminal Guilds had not actually made Ankh-Morpork a safer
place, it just rationalised its dangers and put them on a regular and reliable
footing. The major Guilds policed the city with more thoroughness and certainly
more success than the old Watch had ever managed, and it was true that any
freelance and unlicensed thief caught by the Thieves' Guild would soon find
himself remanded in custody by social inquiry reports plus having his knees
nailed together[9].

However, there were always a few spirits who would venture a precarious living
outside the lawless, and the five men of this description were closing
cautiously on the trio to introduce them to this week's special offer, a cut
throat plus theft and burial in the river mud of your choice.
People normally keep out of the way of assassins because of an instinctive
feeling that killing people for very large sums of money is disapproved of by
the gods (who generally prefer people to be killed for very small sums of money
or for free) and could result in hubris, which is the judgement of the gods. The
gods are great believers in justice, at least as far as it extends to humans,
and have been known to dispense it so enthusiastically that people miles away
are turned into cruet.
However, assassin's black doesn't frighten everyone, and in certain sections of
society there is a distinct cachet in killing an assassin. It's rather like
smashing a sixer in conkers.
Broadly, therefore, the three even now lurching across the deserted planks of
the Brass Bridge were dead drunk assassins and the men behind them were bent on
inserting the significant comma.
Chidder wandered into one of the heraldic wooden hippopotami[10] that lined the
seaward edge of the bridge, bounced off and flopped over the parapet.
'Feel sick,' he announced.
'Feel free,' said Arthur, 'that's what the river's for.'
Teppic sighed. He was attached to rivers, which he felt were designed to have
water lilies on top and crocodiles underneath, and the Ankh always depressed him
because if you put a water lily in it, it would dissolve. It drained the huge
silty plains all the way to the Ramtop mountains, and by the time it had passed
through Ankh-Morpork, pop. One million, it could only be called a liquid because
it moved faster than the land around it; actually being sick in it would
probably make it, on average, marginally cleaner.
He stared down at the thin trickle that oozed between the central pillars, and
then raised his gaze to the grey horizon.
'Sun's coming up,' he announced.
'Don't remember eating that,' muttered Chidder.
Teppic stepped back, and a knife ripped past his nose and buried itself in the
buttocks of the hippo next to him.
Five figures stepped out of the mists. The three assassins instinctively drew
together.
'You come near me, you'll really regret it,' moaned Chidder, clutching his
stomach. 'The cleaning bill will be horrible.'
'Well now, what have we here?' said the leading thief. This is the sort of thing
that gets said in these circumstances.
'Thieves' Guild, are you?' said Arthur.
'No,' said the leader, 'we're the small and unrepresentative minority that gets
the rest a bad name. Give us your valuables and weapons, please. This won't make
any difference to the outcome, you understand. It's just that corpse robbing is
unpleasant and degrading.'
'We could rush them,' said Teppic, uncertainly.
'Don't look at me,' said Arthur, 'I couldn't find my arse with an atlas.'
'You'll really be sorry when I'm sick,' said Chidder. Teppic was aware of the
throwing knives stuffed up either sleeve, and that the chances of him being able
to get hold of one in time still to be alive to throw it were likely to be very
small.
At times like this religious solace is very important. He turned and looked
towards the sun, just as it withdrew from the cloudbanks of the dawn.
There was a tiny dot in the centre of it.

The late King Teppicymon XXVII opened his eyes.
'I was flying,' he whispered, 'I remember the feeling of wings. What am I doing
here?'
He tried to stand up. There was a temporary feeling of heaviness, which suddenly
dropped away so that he rose to his feet almost without any effort. He looked
down to see what had caused it.
'Oh dear,' he said.
The culture of the river kingdom had a lot to say about death and what happened
afterwards. In fact it had very little to say about life, regarding it as a sort
of inconvenient prelude to the main event and something to be hurried through as
politely as possible, and therefore the pharaoh reached the conclusion that he
was dead very quickly. The sight of his mangled body on the sand below him
played a major part in this.
There was a greyness about everything. The landscape had a ghostly look, as
though he could walk straight through it. Of course, he thought, I probably can.

He rubbed the analogue of his hands. Well, this is it. This is where it gets
interesting; this is where I start to really live.
Behind him a voice said, GOOD MORNING.
The king turned.
'Hallo,' he said. 'You'd be-'
DEATH, said Death.
The king looked surprised.
'I understood that Death came as a three-headed giant scarab beetle,' he said.
Death shrugged. WELL. NOW YOU KNOW.
'What's that thing in your hand?'
THIS? IT'S A SCYTHE.
'Strange-looking object, isn't it?' said the pharaoh. 'I thought Death carried
the Flail of Mercy and the Reaping Hook of Justice.'
Death appeared to think about this.
WHAT IN? he said.
'Pardon?'
ARE WE STILL TALKING ABOUT A GIANT BEETLE?
'Ah. In his mandibles, I suppose. But I think he's got arms in one of the
frescoes in the palace.' The king hesitated. 'Seems a bit silly, really, now I
come to tell someone. I mean, a giant beetle with arms. And the head of an ibis,
I seem to recall.'
Death sighed. He was not a creature of Time, and therefore past and future were
all one to him, but there had been a period when he'd made an effort to appear
in whatever form the client expected. This foundered because it was usually
impossible to know what the client was expecting until after they were dead. And
then he'd decided that, since no-one ever really expected to die anyway, he
might as well please himself and he'd henceforth stuck to the familiar
black-cowled robe, which was neat and very familiar and acceptable everywhere,
like the best credit cards.
'Anyway,' said the pharaoh, 'I expect we'd better be going.'
WHERE TO?
'Don't you know?'
I AM HERE ONLY TO SEE THAT YOU DIE AT THE APPOINTED TIME. WHAT HAPPENS NEXT IS
UP TO YOU.
'Well . . .' The king automatically scratched his chin. 'I suppose I have to
wait until they've done all the preparations and so forth. Mummified me. And
built a bloody pyramid. Um. Do I have to hang around here to wait for all that?'

I ASSUME SO. Death clicked his fingers and a magnificent white horse ceased its
grazing on some of the garden greenery and trotted towards him.
'Oh. Well, I think I shall look away. They take all the squishy inside bits out
first, you know.' A look of faint worry crossed his face. Things that had seemed
perfectly sensible when he was alive seemed a little suspect now that he was
dead.
'It's to preserve the body so that it may begin life anew in the Netherworld,'
he added, in a slightly perplexed voice. 'And then they wrap you in bandages. At
least that seems logical.'
He rubbed his nose. 'But then they put all this food and drink in the pyramid
with you. Bit weird, really.'
WHERE ARE ONE'S INTERNAL ORGANS AT THIS POINT?
'That's the funny thing, isn't it? They're in a jar in the next room,' said the
king, his voice edged with doubt. 'We even put a damn great model cart in dad's
pyramid.'
His frown deepened. 'Solid wood, it was,' he said, half to himself, 'with gold
leaf all over it. And four wooden bullocks to pull it. Then we whacked a damn
great stone over the door . . .'
He tried to think, and found that it was surprisingly easy. New ideas were
pouring into his mind in a cold, clear stream. They had to do with the play of
light on the rocks, the deep blue of the sky, the manifold possibilities of the
world that stretched away on every side of him. Now that he didn't have a body
to importune him with its insistent demands the world seemed full of
astonishments, but unfortunately among the first of them was the fact that much
of what you thought was true now seemed as solid and reliable as marsh gas. And
also that, just as he was fully equipped to enjoy the world, he was going to be
buried inside a pyramid.
When you die, the first thing you lose is your life. The next thing is your
illusions.
I CAN SEE YOU HAVE GOT A LOT TO THINK ABOUT, said Death, mounting up. AND NOW,
IF YOU'LL EXCUSE ME-
'Hang on a moment-'
YES?
'When I . . . fell, I could have sworn that I was flying.'
THAT PART OF YOU THAT WAS DIVINE DID FLY, NATURALLY. YOU ARE NOW FULLY MORTAL.
'Mortal?'
TAKE IT FROM ME. I KNOW ABOUT THESE THINGS.
'Oh. Look, there's quite a few questions I'd like to ask-'
THERE ALWAYS ARE. I'M SORRY. Death clapped his heels to his horse's flanks, and
vanished.
The king stood there as several servants came hurrying along the palace wall,
slowed down as they approached his corpse, and advanced with caution.
'Are you all right, O jewelled master of the sun?' one of them ventured.
'No, I'm not,' snapped the king, who was having some of his basic assumptions
about the universe severely raffled, and that never puts anyone in a good mood.
'I'm by way of being dead just at the moment. Amazing, isn't it,' he added
bitterly.
'Can you hear us, O divine bringer of the morning?' inquired the other servant,
tiptoeing closer.
'I've just fallen off a hundred foot wall on to my head, what do you think?'
shouted the king.
'I don't think he can hear us, Jahmet,' said the other servant.
'Listen,' said the king, whose urgency was equalled only by the servants' total
inability to hear anything he was saying, 'you must find my son and tell him to
forget about the pyramid business, at least until I've thought about it a bit,
there are one or two points which seem a little self-contradictory about the
whole afterlife arrangements, and-'
'Shall I shout?' said Jahmet.
'I don't think you can shout loud enough. I think he's dead.'
Jahmet looked down at the stiffening corpse.
'Bloody hell,' he said eventually. 'Well, that's tomorrow up the spout for a
start.'

The sun, unaware that it was making its farewell performance, continued to drift
smoothly above the rim of the world. And out of it, moving faster than any bird
should be able to fly, a seagull bore down on Ankh-Morpork, on the Brass Bridge
and eight still figures, on one staring face .
Seagulls were common enough in Ankh. But as this one flew over the group it
uttered one long, guttural scream that caused three of the thieves to drop their
knives. Nothing with feathers ought to have been able to make a noise like that.
It had claws in it.
The bird wheeled in a tight circle and fluttered to a perch on a convenient
wooden hippo, where it glared at the group with mad red eyes.
The leading thief tore his fascinated gaze away from it just as he heard Arthur
say, quite pleasantly, 'This is a number two throwing knife. I got ninety-six
per cent for throwing knives. Which eyeball don't you need?'
The leader stared at him. As far as the other young assassins were concerned, he
noticed, one was still staring fixedly at the seagull while the other was busy
being noisily sick over the parapet.
'There's only one of you,' he said. 'There's five of us.
'But soon there will only be four of you,' said Arthur. Moving slowly, like
someone in a daze, Teppic reached out his hand to the seagull. With any normal
seagull this would have resulted in the loss of a thumb, but the creature hopped
on to it with the smug air of the master returning to the old plantation.
It seemed to make the thieves increasingly uneasy. Arthur's smile wasn't helping
either.
'That's a nice bird,' said the leader, in the inanely cheerful tones of the
extremely worried. Teppic was dreamily stroking its bullet head.
'I think it would be a good idea if you went away,' said Arthur, as the bird
shuffled sideways on to Teppic's wrist. Gripping with webbed feet, thrusting out
its wings to maintain its balance, it should have looked clownish but instead
looked full of hidden power, as though it was an eagle's secret identity. When
it opened its mouth, revealing a ridiculous purple bird tongue, there was a
suggestion that this seagull could do a lot more than menace a seaside tomato
sandwich.
'Is it magic?' said one of the thieves, and was quickly hushed.
'We'll be going, then,' said the leader, 'sorry about the misunderstanding-'
Teppic gave him a warm, unseeing smile.
Then they all heard the insistent little noise. Six pairs of eyes swivelled
around and down; Chidder's were already in position.
Below them, pouring darkly across the dehydrated mud, the Ankh was rising.

Dios, First Minister and high priest among high priests, wasn't a naturally
religious man. It wasn't a desirable quality in a high priest, it affected your
judgement, made you unsound. Start believing in things and the whole business
became a farce.
Not that he had anything against belief. People needed to believe in gods, if
only because it was so hard to believe in people. The gods were necessary. He
just required that they stayed out of the way and let him get on with things.
Mind you, it was a blessing that he had the looks for it. If your genes saw fit
to give you a tall frame, a bald head and a nose you could plough rocks with,
they probably had a definite aim in mind.
He instinctively distrusted people to whom religion came easily. The naturally
religious, he felt, were unstable and given to wandering in the desert and
having revelations - as if the gods would lower themselves to that sort of
thing. And they never got anything done. They started thinking that rituals
weren't important. They started thinking that you could talk to the gods direct.
Dios knew, with the kind of rigid and unbending certainty you could pivot the
world on, that the gods of Djelibeybi liked ritual as much as anyone else. After
all, a god who was against ritual would be like a fish who was against water.
He sat on the steps of the throne with his staff across his knees, and passed on
the king's orders. The fact that they were not currently being issued by any
king was not a problem. Dios had been high priest now for, well, more years than
he cared to remember, he knew quite clearly what orders a sensible king would be
giving, and he gave them.
Anyway, the Face of the Sun was on the throne, and that was what mattered. It
was a solid gold, head-enveloping mask, to be worn by the current ruler on all
public occasions; its expression, to the sacrilegious, was one of good-natured
constipation. For thousands of years it had symbolised kingship in Djelibeybi.
It had also made it very difficult to tell kings apart.
This was extremely symbolic as well, although no-one could remember what of.
There was a lot of that sort of thing in the Old Kingdom. The staff across his
knees, for example, with its very symbolic snakes entwined symbolically around
an allegorical camel prod. The people believed this gave the high priests power
over the gods and the dead, but this was probably a metaphor, i.e., a lie.
Dios shifted position.
'Has the king been ushered to the Room of Going Forth?' he said.
The circle of lesser high priests nodded.
'Dil the embalmer is attending upon him at this instant, O Dios.'
'Very well. And the builder of pyramids has been instructed?' Hoot Koomi, high
priest of Khefin, the Two-Faced God of Gateways, stepped forward.
'I took the liberty of attending to that myself, O Dios,' he purred.
Dios tapped his fingers on his staff. 'Yes,' he said, 'I have no doubt that you
did.'
It was widely expected by the priesthood that Koomi would be the one to succeed
Dios in the event of Dios ever actually dying, although hanging around waiting
for Dios to die had never seemed to be a rewarding occupation. The only
dissenting opinion was that of Dios himself, who, if he had any friends, would
probably have confided in them certain conditions that would need to apply
first, viz., blue moons, aerial pigs and he, Dios, being seen in Hell. He would
probably have added that the only difference between Koomi and a sacred
crocodile was the crocodile's basic honesty of purpose.
'Very well,' he said.
'If I may remind your lordship?' said Koomi. The faces of the other priests went
a nice safe blank as Dios glared.
'Yes, Koomi?'
'The prince, O Dios. Has he been summoned?'
'No,' said Dios.
'Then how will he know?' said Koomi.
'He will know,' said Dios firmly.
'How will this be?'
'He will know. And now you are all dismissed. Go away. See to your gods!'
They scurried out, leaving Dios alone on the steps. It had been his accustomed
position for so long that he'd polished a groove in the stonework, into which he
fitted exactly.
Of course the prince would know. It was part of the neatness of things. But in
the grooves of his mind, ground deep by the years of ritual and due observance,
Dios detected a certain uneasiness. It was not at home in there. Uneasiness was
something that happened to other people. He hadn't got where he was today by
allowing room for doubt. Yet there was a tiny thought back there, a tiny
certainty, that there was going to be trouble with this new king.
Well. The boy would soon learn. They all learned.
He shifted position, and winced. The aches and pains were back, and he couldn't
allow that. They got in the way of his duty, and his duty was a sacred trust.
He'd have to visit the necropolis again. Tonight.

'He's not himself, you can see that.'
'Who is he, then?' said Chidder.
They splashed unsteadily down the street, not drunkenly this time, but with the
awkward gait of two people trying to do the steering for three. Teppic was
walking, but not in a way that gave them any confidence that his mind was having
any part of it.
Around them doors were being thrown open, curses were being cursed, there was
the sound of furniture being dragged up to first-floor rooms.
'Must have been a hell of a storm up in the mountains,' said Arthur. 'It doesn't
usually flood like this even in the spring.'
'Maybe we should burn some feathers under his nose,' suggested Chidder.
'That bloody seagull would be favourite,' Arthur growled.
'What seagull?'
'You saw it.'
'Well, what about it?'
'You did see it, didn't you?' Uncertainty flickered its dark flame in Arthur's
eyes. The seagull had disappeared in all the excitement.
'My attention was a bit occupied,' said Chidder diffidently. 'It must have been
those mint wafers they served with the coffee. I thought they were a bit off.'
'Definitely a touch eldritch, that bird,' said Arthur. 'Look, let's put him down
somewhere while I empty the water out of my boots, can we?'
There was a bakery nearby, its doors thrown open so that the trays of new loaves
could cool in the early morning. They propped Teppic against the wall.
'He looks as though someone hit him on the head,' said Chidder. 'No-one did, did
they?'
Arthur shook his head. Teppic's face was locked in a gentle grin. Whatever his
eyes were focused on wasn't occupying the usual set of dimensions.
'We ought to get him back to the Guild and into the san-' He stopped. There was
a peculiar rustling sound behind him. The loaves of bread were bouncing gently
on their trays. One or two of them vibrated on to the floor, where they spun
around like overturned beetles.
Then, their crusts cracking open like eggshells, they sprouted hundreds of green
shoots.
Within a few seconds the trays were waving stands of young corn, their heads
already beginning to fill out and bend over. Through them marched Chidder and
Arthur, poker-faced, doing the 100-metre nonchalant walk with Teppic held
rigidly between them.
'Is it him doing all this?'
'I've got a feeling that-' Arthur looked behind them, just in case any angry
bakers had come out and spotted such aggressively wholemeal produce, and stopped
so suddenly that the other two swung around him, like a rudder.
They looked thoughtfully at the street.
'Not something you see every day, that,' said Chidder at last.
'You mean the way there's grass and stuff growing up everywhere he puts his
feet?'
'Yes.'
Their eyes met. As one, they looked down at Teppic's shoes. He was already
ankle-deep in greenery, which was cracking the centuries-old cobbles in its
urgency.
Without speaking a word, they gripped his elbows and lifted him into the air.
'The san,' said Arthur.
'The san,' agreed Chidder.
But they both knew, even then, that this was going to involve more than a hot
poultice.

The doctor sat back.
'Fairly straightforward,' he said, thinking quickly. 'A case of mortis portalis
tackulatum with complications.'
'What's that mean?' said Chidder.
'In layman's terms,' the doctor sniffed, 'he's as dead as a doornail.'
'What are the complications?'
The doctor looked shifty. 'He's still breathing,' he said. 'Look, his pulse is
nearly humming and he's got a temperature you could fry eggs on.' He hesitated,
aware that this was probably too straightforward and easily understood; medicine
was a new art on the Disc, and wasn't going to get anywhere if people could
understand it.
'Pyrocerebrum ouerf culinaire,' he said, after working it out in his head.
'Well, what can you do about it?' said Arthur.
'Nothing. He's dead. All the medical tests prove it. So, er . . . bury him, keep
him nice and cool, and tell him to come and see me next week. In daylight, for
preference.'
'But he's still breathing!'
'These are just reflex actions that might easily confuse the layman,' said the
doctor airily.

Chidder sighed. He suspected that the Guild, who after all had an unrivalled
experience of sharp knives and complex organic compounds, was much better at
elementary diagnostics than were the doctors. The Guild might kill people, but
at least it didn't expect them to be grateful for it.
Teppic opened his eyes.
'I must go home,' he said.
'Dead, is he?' said Chidder.
The doctor was a credit to his profession. 'It's not unusual for a corpse to
make distressing noises after death,' he said valiantly, 'which can upset
relatives and-'
Teppic sat bolt upright.
'Also, muscular spasms in the stiffening body can in certain circumstances-' the
doctor began, but his heart wasn't in it any more. Then an idea occurred to him.

'It's a rare and mysterious ailment,' he said, 'which is going around a lot at
the moment. It's caused by a - a - by some- thing so small it can't be detected
in any way whatsoever,' he finished, with a self-congratulatory smile on his
face. It was a good one, he had to admit. He'd have to remember it.
'Thank you very much,' said Chidder, opening the door and ushering him through.
'Next time we're feeling really well, we'll definitely call you in.'
'It's probably a walrus,' said the doctor, as he was gently but firmly propelled
out of the room. 'He's caught a walrus, there's a lot of it going-'
The door slammed shut.
Teppic swung his legs off the bed and clutched at his head.
'I've got to go home,' he repeated.
'Why?' said Arthur.
'Don't know. The kingdom wants me.'
'You seemed to be taken pretty bad there-' Arthur began. Teppic waved his hands
dismissively.
'Look,' he said, 'please, I don't want anyone sensibly pointing out things. I
don't want anyone telling me I should rest. None of it matters. I will be back
in the kingdom as soon as possible. It's not a case of must, you understand. I
will. And you can help me, Chiddy.'
'How?'
'Your father has an extremely fast vessel he uses for smuggling,' said Teppic
flatly. 'He will lend it to me, in exchange for favourable consideration of
future trading opportunities. If we leave inside the hour, it will do the
journey in plenty of time.'
'My father is an honest trader!'
'On the contrary. Seventy per cent of his income last year was from undeclared
trading in the following commodities-' Teppic's eyes stared into nothingness -
'From illegal transport of gullanes and leuchars, nine per cent. From
night-running of untaxed-'
'Well, thirty per cent honest,' Chidder admitted, 'which is a lot more honest
than most. You'd better tell me how you know. Extremely quickly.'
'I - don't know,' said Teppic. 'When I was . . . asleep, it seemed I knew
everything. Everything about everything. I think my father is dead.'
'Oh,' said Chidder. 'Gosh, I'm sorry.'
'Oh, no. It's not like that. It's what he would have wanted. I think he was
rather looking forward to it. In our family, death is when you really start to,
you know, enjoy life. I expect he's rather enjoying it.'

In fact the pharaoh was sitting on a spare slab in the ceremonial preparation
room watching his own soft bits being carefully removed from his body and put
into the special Canopic jars.
This is not a sight often seen by people - at least, not by people in a position
to take a thoughtful interest.
He was rather upset. Although he was no longer officially inhabiting his body he
was still attached to it by some sort of occult bond, and it is hard to be very
happy at seeing two artisans up to the elbows in bits of you.
The jokes aren't funny, either. Not when you are, as it were, the butt.
'Look, master Dil,' said Gern, a plump, red-faced young man who the king had
learned was the new apprentice. uk... hght... watch this, watch this.. . hgk..
your name in lights. Get it? Your name in lights, see?'
'Just put them in the jar, boy,' said Dil wearily. 'And while we're on the
subject I didn't think much of the Gottle of Geer routine, either.'
'Sorry, master.'
'And pass me over a number three brain hook while you're up that end, will you?'

'Coming right up, master,' said Gern.
'And don't jog me. This is a fiddly bit.'
'Sure thing.'
The king craned nearer.
Gern rummaged around at his end of the job and then gave a long, low whistle.
'Will you look at the colour of this!' he said. 'You wouldn't think so, would
you? Is it something they eat, master?'
Dil sighed. 'Just put it in the pot, Gern.'
'Right you are, master. Master?'
'Yes, lad?'
'Which bit's got the god in it, master?'
Dil squinted up the king's nostril, trying to concentrate. 'That gets sorted out
before he comes down here,' he said patiently.
'I wondered,' said Gern, 'because there's not a jar for it, see.'
'No. There wouldn't be. It'd have to be a rather strange jar, Gern.'
Gern looked a bit disappointed. 'Oh,' he said, 'so he's just ordinary, then, is
he?'
'In a strictly organic sense,' said Dil, his voice slightly muffled.
'Our mum said he was all right as a king,' said Gern. 'What do you think?'
Dil paused with a jar in his hand, and seemed to give the conversation some
thought for the first time.
'Never think about it until they come down here,' he said. 'I suppose he was
better than most. Nice pair of lungs. Clean kidneys. Good big sinuses, which is
what I always look for in a king.' He looked down, and delivered his
professional judgement. 'Pleasure to work with, really.'
'Our mum said his heart was in the right place,' said Gern. The king, hovering
dismally in the corner, gave a gloomy nod. Yes, he thought. Jar three, top
shelf.
Dil wiped his hands on a rag, and sighed. Possibly thirty-five years in the
funeral business, which had given him a steady hand, a philosophic manner and a
keen interest in vegetarianism, had also granted him powers of hearing beyond
the ordinary. Because he was almost persuaded that, right beside his ear,
someone else sighed too.
The king wandered sadly over to the other side of the room, and stared at the
dull liquid of the preparation vat.
Funny, that. When he was alive it had all seemed so sensible, so obvious. Now he
was dead it looked a huge waste of effort.
It was beginning to annoy him. He watched Dil and his apprentice tidy up, burn
some ceremonial resins, lift him - it - up, carry it respectfully across the
room and slide it gently into the oily embrace of the preservative. Teppicymon
XXVII gazed into the murky depths at his own body lying sadly on the bottom,
like the last pickled gherkin in the jar.
He raised his eyes to the sacks in the corner. They were full of straw. He
didn't need telling what was going to be done with it.

The boat didn't glide. It insinuated itself through the water, dancing across
the waves on the tips of the twelve oars, spreading like an oil slick, gliding
like a bird. It was man black and shaped like a shark.
There was no drummer to beat the rhythm. The boat didn't want the weight.
Anyway, he'd have needed the full kit, including snares.
Teppic sat between the lines of silent rowers, in the narrow gully that was the
cargo hold. Better not to speculate what cargoes. The boat looked designed to
move very small quantities of things very quickly and without anyone noticing,
and he doubted whether even the Smugglers' Guild was aware of its existence.
Commerce was more interesting than he thought.
They found the delta with suspicious ease - how many times had this whispering
shadow slipped up the river, he wondered - and above the exotic smells from the
mysterious former cargo he could detect the scents of home. Crocodile dung. Reed
pollen. Waterlily blossoms. Lack of plumbing. The rank of lions and reek of
hippos.
The leading oarsman tapped him gently on the shoulder and motioned him up,
steadied him as he stepped overboard into a few feet of water. By the time he'd
waded ashore the boat had turned and was a mere suspicion of a shadow
downstream.
Because he was naturally curious, Teppic wondered where it would lie up during
the day, since it had the look about it of a boat designed to travel only under
cover of darkness, and decided that it'd probably lurk somewhere in the high
reed marshes on the delta.
And because he was now a king, he made a mental note to have the marshes
patrolled periodically from now on. A king should know things.
He stopped, ankle deep in river ooze. He had known everything.
Arthur had rambled on vaguely about seagulls and rivers and loaves of bread
sprouting, which suggested he'd drunk too much. All Teppic could remember was
waking up with a terrible sense of loss, as his memory failed to hold and leaked
away its new treasures. It was like the tremendous insights that come in dreams
and vanish on waking. He'd known everything, but as soon as he tried to remember
what it was it poured out of his head, as from a leaky bucket.
But it had left him with a new sensation. Before, his life had been ambling
along, bent by circumstance. Now it was clicking along on bright rails. Perhaps
he hadn't got it in him to be an assassin, but he knew he could be a king.
His feet found solid ground. The boat had dropped him off a little way
downstream of the palace and, blue in the moonlight, the pyramid flares on the
far bank were filling the night with their familiar glow.
The abodes of the happy dead came in all sizes although not, of course, in all
shapes. They clustered thickly nearer the city, as though the dead like company.

And even the oldest ones were all complete. No-one had borrowed any of the
stones to build houses or make roads. Teppic felt obscurely proud of that.
No-one had unsealed the doors and wandered around inside to see if the dead had
any old treasures they weren't using any more. And every day, without fail, food
was left in the little antechambers; the commissaries of the dead occupied a
large part of the palace.
Sometimes the food went, sometimes it didn't. The priests, however, were very
clear on this point. Regardless of whether the food was consumed or not, it had
been eaten by the dead. Presumably they enjoyed it; they never complained, or
came back for seconds.
Look after the dead, said the priests, and the dead would look after you. After
all, they were in the majority.
Teppic pushed aside the reeds. He straightened his clothing, brushed some mud
off his sleeve and set off for the palace.
Ahead of him, dark against the flarelight, stood the great statue of Khuft.
Seven thousand years ago Khuft had led his people out of - Teppic couldn't
remember, but somewhere where they hadn't liked being, probably, and for
thoroughly good reasons; it was at times like this he wished he knew more
history - and had prayed in the desert and the gods of the place had shown him
the Old Kingdom. And he had entered, yea, and taken possession thereof, that it
should ever be the dwelling place of his seed. Something like that, anyway.
There were probably more yeas and a few verilys, with added milk and honey. But
the sight of that great patriarchal face, that outstretched arm, that chin you
could crack stones on, bold in the flarelight, told him what he already knew.
He was home, and he was never going to leave again.
The sun began to rise.

The greatest mathematician alive on the Disc, and in fact the last one in the
Old Kingdom, stretched out in his stall and counted the pieces of straw in his
bedding. Then he estimated the number of nails in the wall. Then he spent a few
minutes proving that an automorphic resonance field has a semi-infinite number
of irresolute prime ideals. After that, in order to pass the time, he ate his
breakfast again.
BOOK II
The Book of the Dead
Two weeks went past. Ritual and ceremony in their due times kept the world under
the sky and the stars in their courses. It was astonishing what ritual and
ceremony could do.
The new king examined himself in the mirror, and frowned.
'What's it made of?' he said. 'It's rather foggy.'
'Bronze, sire. Polished bronze,' said Dios, handing him the Flail of Mercy.
'In Ankh-Morpork we had glass mirrors with silver on the back. They were very
good.'
'Yes, sire. Here we have bronze, sire.'
'Do I really have to wear this gold mask?'
'The Face of the Sun, sire. Handed down through all the ages. Yes, sire. On all
public occasions, sire.'
Teppic peered out through the eye slots. It was certainly a handsome face. It
smiled faintly. He remembered his father visiting the nursery one day and
forgetting to take it off; Teppic had screamed the place down.
'It's rather heavy.'
'It is weighted with the centuries,' said Dios, and passed over the obsidian
Reaping Hook of Justice.
'Have you been a priest long, Dios?'
'Many years, sire, man and eunuch. Now-'
'Father said you were high priest even in grandad's time. You must be very old.'

'Well-preserved, sire. The gods have been kind to me,' said Dios, in the face of
the evidence. 'And now, sire, if we could just hold this as well . .
'What is it?'
'The Honeycomb of Increase, sire. Very important.'
Teppic juggled it into position.
'I expect you've seen a lot of changes,' he said politely.
A look of pain passed over the old priest's face, but quickly, as if it was in a
hurry to get away. 'No, sire,' he said smoothly, 'I have been very fortunate.'
'Oh. What's this?'
'The Sheaf of Plenty, sire. Extremely significant, very symbolic.'
'If you could just tuck it under my arm, then. . . Have you ever heard of
plumbing, Dios?'
The priest snapped his fingers at one of the attendants. 'No, sire,' he said,
and leaned forward. 'This is the Asp of Wisdom. I'll just tuck it in here, shall
I?'
'It's like buckets, but not as, um, smelly.'
'Sounds dreadful, sire. The smell keeps bad influences away, I have always
understood. This, sire, is the Gourd of the Waters of the Heavens. If we could
just raise our chin . . .'
'This is all necessary, is it?' said Teppic indistinctly. 'It is traditional,
sire. If we could just rearrange things a little, sire. . . here is the
Three-Pronged Spear of the Waters of the Earth; I think we will be able to get
this finger around it. We shall have to see about our marriage, sire.'
'I'm not sure we would be compatible, Dios.'
The high priest smiled with his mouth. 'Sire is pleased to jest, sire,' he said
urbanely. 'However, it is essential that you marry.'
'I am afraid all the girls I know are in Ankh-Morpork,' said Teppic airily,
knowing in his heart that this broad statement referred to Mrs Collar, who had
been his bedder in the sixth form, and one of the serving wenches who'd taken a
shine to him and always gave him extra gravy. (But . . . and his blood pounded
at the memory.. . there had been the annual Assassins' Ball and, because the
young assassins were trained to move freely in society and were expected to
dance well, and because well-cut black silk and long legs attracted a certain
type of older woman, they'd whirled the night away through baubons, galliards
and slow-stepping pavonines, until the air thickened with musk and hunger.
Chidder, whose simple open face and easygoing manner were a winner every time,
came back to bed very late for days afterwards and tended to fall asleep during
lessons . .
'Quite unsuitable, sire. We would require a consort well-versed in the
observances. Of course, our aunt is available, sire.'
There was a clatter. Dios sighed, and motioned the attendants to pick things up.

'If we could just begin again, sire? This is the Cabbage of Vegetative
Increase-'
'Sorry,' said Teppic, 'I didn't hear you say I should marry my aunt, did I?'
'You did, sire. Interfamilial marriage is a proud tradition of our lineage,'
said Dios.
'But my aunt is my aunt!'
Dios rolled his eyes. He'd advised the late king repeatedly about the education
of his son, but the man was stubborn, stubborn. Now he'd have to do it on the
fly. The gods were testing him, he decided. It took decades to make a monarch,
and he had weeks to do it in.
'Yes, sire,' he said patiently. 'Of course. And she is also your uncle, your
cousin and your father.'
'Hold on. My father-'
The priest raised his hand soothingly. 'A technicality,' he said. 'Your
great-great-grandmother once declared she is king as a matter of political
expediency and I don't believe the edict is ever rescinded.'
'But she was a woman, though?'
Dios looked shocked. 'Oh no, sire. She is a man. She herself declared this.'
'But look, a chap's aunt-'
'Quite so, sire. I quite understand.'
'Well, thank you,' said Teppic.
'It is a great shame that we have no sisters.'
'Sisters!'
'It does not do to water the divine blood, sire. The sun might not like it. Now
this, sire, is the Scapula of Hygiene. Where would you like it put?'

King Teppicymon XXVII was watching himself being stuffed. It was just as well he
didn't feel hunger these days. Certainly he would never want to eat chicken
again.
'Very nice stitching there, master.'
'Just keep your finger still, Gern.'
'My mother does stitching like that. She's got a pinny with stitching like that,
has our mum,' said Gern conversationally.
'Keep it still, I said.'
'It's got all ducks and hens on it,' Gern supplied helpfully. Dil concentrated
on the job in hand. It was good workmanship, he was prepared to admit. The Guild
of Embalmers and Allied Trades had awarded him medals for it.
'It must make you feel really proud,' said Gern.
'What?'
'Well, our mam says the king goes on living, sort of thing, after all this
stuffing and stitching. Sort of in the Netherworld. With your stitching in him.'

And several sacks of straw and a couple of buckets of pitch, thought the shade
of the king sadly. And the wrapping off Gern's lunch, although he didn't blame
the lad, who'd just forgotten where he'd put it. All eternity with someone's
lunch wrapping as part of your vital organs. There had been half a sausage left,
too.
He'd become quite attached to Dil, and even to Gern. He seemed still to be
attached to his body, too - at least, he felt uncomfortable if he wandered more
than a few hundred yards away from it - and so in the course of the last couple
of days he'd learned quite a lot about them.
Funny, really. He'd spent the whole of his life in the kingdom talking to a few
priests and so forth. He knew objectively there had been other people around -
servants and gardeners and so forth - but they figured in his life as blobs. He
was at the top, and then his family, and then the priests and the nobles of
course, and then there were the blobs. Damn fine blobs, of course, some of the
finest blobs in the world, as loyal a collection of blobs as a king might hope
to rule. But blobs, none the less.
But now he was absolutely engrossed in the daily details of Dil's shy hopes for
advancement within the Guild, and the unfolding story of Gern's clumsy overtures
to Glwenda, the garlic farmer's daughter who lived nearby. He listened in
fascinated astonishment to the elaboration of a world as full of subtle
distinctions of grade and station as the one he had so recently left; it was
terrible to think that he might never know if Gern overcame her father's
objections and won his intended, or if Dil's work on this job - on him - would
allow him to aspire to the rank of Exalted Grand Ninety-Degree Variance of the
Matron Lodge of the Guild of Embalmers and Allied Trades.
It was as if death was some astonishing optical device which turned even a drop
of water into a complex hive of life.
He found an overpowering urge to counsel Dil on elementary politics, or apprise
Gern of the benefits of washing and looking respectable. He tried it several
times. They could sense him, there was no doubt about that. But they just put it
down to draughts.
Now he watched Dil pad over to the big table of bandages, and come back with a
thick swatch which he held reflectively against what even the king was now
prepared to think of as his corpse.
'I think the linen,' he said at last. 'It's definitely his colour.'
Gern put his head on one side.
'He'd look good in the hessian,' he said. 'Or maybe the calico.'
'Not the calico. Definitely not the calico. On him it's too big.'
'He could moulder into it. With wear, you know.'
Dil snorted. 'Wear? Wear? You shouldn't talk to me about calico and wear. What
happens if someone robs the tomb in a thousand years' time and him in calico,
I'd like to know. He'd lurch halfway down the corridor, maybe throttle one of
them, I'll grant you, but then he's coming undone, right? The elbows'll be out
in no time, I'll never live it down.'
'But you'll be dead, master!'
'Dead? What's that got to do with it?' Dil riffled through the samples. 'No,
it'll be the hessian. Got plenty of give in it, hessian. Good traction, too.
He'll really be able to lurch up speed in the passages, if he ever needs to.'
The king sighed. He'd have preferred something lightweight in taffeta.
'And go and shut the door,' Dil added. 'It's getting breezy in here.'

'And now it's time,' said the high priest, 'for us to see our late father.' He
allowed himself a quiet smile. 'I am sure he is looking forward to it,' he
added.
Teppic considered this. It wasn't something he was looking forward to, but at
least it would get everyone's mind off him marrying relatives. He reached down
in what he hoped was a kingly fashion to stroke one of the palace cats. This
also was not a good move. The creature sniffed it, went cross-eyed with the
effort of thought, and then bit his fingers.
'Cats are sacred,' said Dios, shocked at the words Teppic uttered.
'Long-legged cats with silver fur and disdainful expressions are, maybe,' said
Teppic, nursing his hand, 'I don't know about this sort. I'm sure sacred cats
don't leave dead ibises under the bed. And I'm certain that sacred cats that
live surrounded by endless sand don't come indoors and do it in the king's
sandals, Dios.'
'All cats are cats,' said Dios, vaguely, and added, 'If we would be so gracious
as to follow us.' He motioned Teppic towards a distant arch.
Teppic followed slowly. He'd been back home for what seemed like ages, and it
still didn't feel right. The air was too dry. The clothes felt wrong. It was too
hot. Even the buildings seemed wrong. The pillars, for one thing. Back home,
back at the Guild, pillars were gracefull fluted things with little bunches of
stone grapes and things around the top. Here they were massive pear-shaped
lumps, where all the stone had run to the bottom.
Half a dozen servants trailed behind him, carrying the various items of regalia.

He tried to imitate Dios's walk, and found the movements coming back to him. You
turned your torso this way, then you turned your head this way, and extended
your arms at forty-five degrees to your body with the palms down, and then you
attempted to move.
The high priest's staff raised echoes as it touched the flagstones. A blind man
could have walked barefoot through the palace by tracing the time-worn dimples
it had created over the years.
'I am afraid that we will find that our father has changed somewhat since we
last saw him,' said Dios conversationally, as they undulated by the fresco of
Queen Khaphut accepting Tribute from the Kingdoms of the World.
'Well, yes,' said Teppic, bewildered by the tone. 'He's dead, isn't he?'
'There's that, too,' said Dios, and Teppic realised that he hadn't been
referring to something as trivial as the king's current physical condition.
He was lost in a horrified admiration. It wasn't that Dios was particularly
cruel or uncaring, it was simply that death was a mere irritating transition in
the eternal business of existence. The fact that people died was just an
inconvenience, like them being out when you called.
It's a strange world, he thought. It's all busy shadows, and it never changes.
And I'm part of it.
'Who's he?' he said, pointing to a particularly big fresco showing a tall man
with a hat like a chimney and a beard like a rope riding a chariot over a lot of
other, much smaller, people.
'His name is in the cartouche below,' said Dios primly.
'What?'
'The small oval, sire,' said Dios.
Teppic peered closely at the dense hieroglyphics.
'"Thin eagle, eye, wiggly line, man with a stick, bird sitting down, wiggly
line",' he read. Dios winced.
'I believe we must apply ourselves more to the study of modem languages,' he
said, recovering a bit. 'His name is Pta-ka-ba. He is king when the Djel Empire
extends from the Circle Sea to the Rim Ocean, when almost half the continent
pays tribute to us.'
Teppic realised what it was about the man's speech that was strange. Dios would
bend any sentence to breaking point if it meant avoiding a past tense. He
pointed to another fresco.
'And her?' he said.
'She is Queen Khat-leon-ra-pta,' said Dios. 'She wins the kingdom of Howandaland
by stealth. This is the time of the Second Empire.'
'But she is dead?' said Teppic.
'I understand so,' said the high priest, after the slightest of pauses. Yes. The
past tense definitely bothered Dios.
'I have learned seven languages,' said Teppic, secure in the knowledge that the
actual marks he had achieved in three of them would remain concealed in the
ledgers of the Guild.
'Indeed, sire?'
'Oh, yes. Morporkian, Vanglemesht, Ephebe, Laotation and several others . . .'
said Teppic.
'Ah.' Dios nodded, smiled, and continued to proceed down the corridor, limping
slightly but still measuring his pace like the ticking of centuries. 'The
barbarian lands.'

Teppic looked at his father. The embalmers had done a good job. They were
waiting for him to tell them so.
Part of him, which still lived in Ankh-Morpork, said: this is a dead body,
wrapped up in bandages, surely they can't think that this will help him get
better? In Ankh, you die and they bury you or burn you or throw you to the
ravens. Here, it just means you slow down a bit and get given all the best food.
It's ridiculous, how can you run a kingdom like this? They seem to think that
being dead is like being deaf, you just have to speak up a bit.
But a second, older voice said: We've run a kingdom like this for seven thousand
years. The humblest melon farmer has a lineage that makes kings elsewhere look
like mayflies. We used to own the continent, before we sold it again to pay for
pyramids. We don't even think about other countries less than three thousand
years old. It all seems to work.
'Hallo, father,' he said.
The shade of Teppicymon XXVII, which had been watching him closely, hurried
across the room.
'You're looking well!' he said. 'Good to see you! Look, this is urgent. Please
pay attention, it's about death-'
'He says he is pleased to see you,' said Dios.
'You can hear him?' said Teppic. 'I didn't hear anything.'
'The dead, naturally, speak through the priests,' said the priest. 'That is the
custom, sire.'
'But he can hear me, can he?'
'Of course.'
'I've been thinking about this whole pyramid business and, look, I'm not certain
about it.'
Teppic leaned closer. 'Auntie sends her love,' he said loudly. He thought about
this. 'That's my aunt, not yours.' I hope, he added.
'I say? I say? Can you hear me?'
'He bids you greetings from the world beyond the veil,' said Dios.
'Well, yes, I suppose I do, but LOOK, I don't want you to go to a lot of trouble
and build-'
'We're going to build you a marvellous pyramid, father. You'll really like it
there. There'll be people to look after you and everything.' Teppic glanced at
Dios for reassurance. 'He'll like that, won't he?'
'I don't WANT one!' screamed the king. 'There's a whole interesting eternity I
haven't seen yet. I forbid you to put me in a pyramid!'
'He says that is very proper, and you are a dutiful son,' said Dios.
'Can you see me? How many fingers am I holding up? Think it's fun, do you,
spending the rest of your death under a million tons of rock, watching yourself
crumble to bits? Is that your idea of a good epoch?'
'It's rather draughty in here, sire,' said Dios. 'Perhaps we should get on.'
'Anyway, you can't possibly afford it!'
'And we'll put your favourite frescoes and statues in with you. You'll like
that, won't you,' said Teppic desperately.
'All your bits and pieces around you.'
'He will like it, won't be?' he asked Dios, as they walked back to the throne
room. 'Only, I don't know, I somehow got a feeling he isn't too happy about it.'

'I assure you, sire,' said Dios, 'he can have no other desire.'
Back in the embalming room King Teppicymon XXVII tried to tap Gern on the
shoulder, which had no effect. He gave up and sat down beside himself.
'Don't do it, lad,' he said bitterly. 'Never have descendants.'

And then there was the Great Pyramid itself.
Teppic's footsteps echoed on the marble tiles as he walked around the model. He
wasn't sure what one was supposed to do here. But kings, he suspected, were
often put in that position; there was always the good old fallback, which was
known as taking an interest.
'Well, well,' he said. 'How long have you been designing pyramids?'
Ptaclusp, architect and jobbing pyramid builder to the nobility, bowed deeply.
'All my life, O light of noonday.'
'It must be fascinating,' said Teppic. Ptaclusp looked sidelong at the high
priest, who nodded.
'It has its points, O fount of waters,' he ventured. He wasn't used to kings
talking to him as though he was a human being. He felt obscurely that it wasn't
right.
Teppic waved a hand at the model on its podium.
'Yes,' he said uncertainly. 'Well. Good. Four walls and a pointy tip. Jolly
good. First class. Says it all, really.' There still seemed to be too much
silence around. He plunged on.
'Good show,' he said. 'I mean; there's no doubt about it. This is.. . a. . .
pyramid. And what a pyramid it is! Indeed.' This still didn't seem enough. He
sought for something else. 'People will look at it in centuries to come and
they'll say, they'll say . . . that is a pyramid. Um.'
He coughed. 'The walls slope nicely,' he croaked.
'But,' he said.
Two pairs of eyes swivelled towards his.
'Um,' he said.
Dios raised an eyebrow.
'Sire?'
'I seem to remember once, my father said that, you know, when he died, he'd
quite like to, sort of thing, be buried at sea.'
There wasn't the choke of outrage he had expected. 'He meant the delta. It's
very soft ground by the delta,' said Ptaclusp. 'It'd take months to get decent
footings in. Then there's your risk of sinking. And the damp. Not good, damp,
inside a pyramid.'
'No,' said Teppic, sweating under Dios's gaze, 'I think what he meant was, you
know, in the sea.'
Ptaclusp's brow furrowed. 'Tricky, that,' he said thoughtfully. 'Interesting
idea. I suppose one could build a small one, a million tonner, and float it out
on pontoons or something...'
'No,' said Teppic, trying not to laugh, 'I think what he meant was, buried
without-'
'Teppicymon XXVII means that he would want to be buried without delay,' said
Dios, his voice like greased silk. 'And there is no doubt that he would require
to honour the very best you can build, architect.'
'No, I'm sure you've got it wrong,' said Teppic.
Dios's face froze. Ptaclusp's slid into the waxen expression of someone with
whom it is, suddenly, nothing to do. He started to stare at the floor as if his
very survival depended on his memorising it in extreme detail.
'Wrong?' said Dios.
'No offence. I'm sure you mean well,' said Teppic. 'It's just that, well, he
seemed very clear about it at the time and-'
'I mean well?' said Dios, tasting each word as though it was a sour grape.
Ptaclusp coughed. He had finished with the floor. Now he started on the ceiling.

Dios took a deep breath. 'Sire,' he said, 'we have always been pyramid builders.
All our kings are buried in pyramids. It is how we do things, sire. It is how
things are done.'
'Yes, but-'
'It does not admit of dispute,' said Dios. 'Who could wish for anything else?
Sealed with all artifice against the desecrations of Time-' now the oiled silk
of his voice became armour, hard as steel, scornful as spears - 'Shielded for
all Time against the insults of Change.'
Teppic glanced down at the high priest's knuckles. They were white, the bone
pressing through the flesh as though in a rage to escape.
His gaze slid up the grey-clad arm to Dios's face. Ye gods, he thought, it's
really true, he does look like they got tired of waiting for him to die and
pickled him anyway. Then his eyes met those of the priest, more or less with a
clang.
He felt as though his flesh was being very slowly blown off his bones. He felt
that he was no more significant than a mayfly. A necessary mayfly, certainly, a
mayfly that would be accorded all due respect, but still an insect with all the
rights thereof. And as much free will, in the fury of that gaze, as a scrap of
papyrus in a hurricane.
'The king's will is that he be interred in a pyramid,' said Dios, in the tone of
voice the Creator must have used to sketch out the moon and stars.
'Er,' said Teppic.
'The finest of pyramids for the king,' said Dios.
Teppic gave up.
'Oh,' he said. 'Good. Fine. Yes. The very best, of course.' Ptaclusp beamed with
relief, produced his wax tablet with a flourish, and took a stylus from the
recesses of his wig. The important thing, he knew, was to clinch the deal as
soon as possible. Let things slip in a situation like this' and a man could find
himself with 1,500,000 tons of bespoke limestone on his hands.
'Then that will be the standard model, shall we say, O water in the desert?'
Teppic looked at Dios, who was standing and glaring at nothing now, staring the
bulldogs of Entropy into submission by willpower alone.
'I think something larger,' he ventured hopelessly.
'That's the Executive,' said Ptaclusp. 'Very exclusive, O base of the eternal
column. Last you a perpetuality. Also our special offer this aeon is various
measurements of paracosmic significance built into the very fabric at no extra
cost.'
He gave Teppic an expectant look.
'Yes. Yes. That will be fine,' said Teppic.
Dios took a deep breath. 'The king requires far more than that,' be said.
'I do?' said Teppic, doubtfully.
'Indeed, sire. It is your express wish that the greatest of monuments is erected
for your father,' said Dios smoothly. This was a contest, Teppic knew, and he
didn't know the rules or how to play and he was going to lose.
'It is? Oh. Yes. Yes. I suppose it is, really. Yes.'
'A pyramid unequalled along the Djel,' said Dios. 'That is the command of the
king. It is only right and proper.'
'Yes, yes, something like that. Er. Twice the normal size,' said Teppic
desperately, and had the brief satisfaction of seeing Dios look momentarily
disconcerted.
'Sire?' he said.
'It is only right and proper,' said Teppic. Dios opened his mouth to protest,
saw Teppic's expression, and shut it again.
Ptaclusp scribbled busily, his adam's apple bobbing. Something like this only
happened once in a business career.
'Can do you a very nice black marble facing on the outside,' he said, without
looking up. 'We may have just enough in the quarry. O king of the celestial
orbs,' he added hurriedly.
'Very good,' said Teppic.
Ptaclusp picked up a fresh tablet. 'Shall we say the capstone picked out in
electrum? It's cheaper to have built in right from the start, you don't want to
use just silver and then say later, I wish I'd had a-'
'Electrum, yes.'
'And the usual offices?'
'What?'
'The burial chamber, that is, and the outer chamber. I'd recommend the Memphis,
very select, that comes with a matching extra large treasure room, so handy for
all those little things one cannot bear to leave behind.' Ptaclusp turned the
tablet over and started on the other side. 'And of course a similar suite for
the Queen, I take it? O King who shall live forever.'
'Eh? Oh, yes. Yes. I suppose so,' said Teppic, glancing at Dios. 'Everything.
You know.'
'Then there's mazes,' said Ptaclusp, trying to keep his voice steady. 'Very
popular this era. Very important, your maze, it's no good deciding you ought to
have put a maze in after the robbers have been. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I'd
go for the Labrys every time. Like we say, they may get in all right, but
they'll never get out. It costs that little bit extra, but what's money at a
time like this? O master of the waters.'
Something we don't have, said a warning voice in the back of Teppic's head. He
ignored it. He was in the grip of destiny.
'Yes,' he said, straightening up. 'The Labrys. Two of them.'
Ptaclusp's stylus went through his tablet.
'His 'n' hers, O stone of stones,' he croaked. 'Very handy, very convenient.
With selection of traps from stock? We can offer deadfalls, pitfalls, sliders,
rolling balls, dropping spears, arrows-'
'Yes, yes,' said Teppic. 'We'll have them. We'll have them all. All of them.'
The architect took a deep breath.
'And of course you'll require all the usual steles, avenues, ceremonial
sphinxes-' he began.
'Lots,' said Teppic. 'We leave it entirely up to you.'
Ptaclusp mopped his brow.
'Fine,' he said. 'Marvellous.' He blew his nose. 'Your father, if I may make so
bold, O sower of the seed, is extremely fortunate in having such a dutiful son.
I may add-'
'You may go,' said Dios. 'And we will expect work to start imminently.'
'Without delay, I assure you,' said Ptaclusp. 'Er.'
He seemed to be wrestling with some huge philosophical problem.
'Yes?' said Dios coldly.
'It's uh. There's the matter of uh. Which is not to say uh. Of course, oldest
client, valued customer, but the fact is that uh. Absolutely no doubt about
credit worthiness uh. Would not wish to suggest in any way whatsoever that uh.'
Dios gave him a stare that would have caused a sphinx to blink and look away.
'You wish to say something?' he said. 'His majesty's time is extremely limited.'

Ptaclusp worked his jaw silently, but the result was a foregone conclusion. Even
gods had been reduced to sheepish mumbling in the face of Dios's face. And the
carved snakes on his staff seemed to be watching him too.
'Uh. No, no. Sorry. I was just, uh, thinking aloud. I'll depart, then, shall I?
Such a lot of work to be done. Uh.' He bowed low.
He was halfway to the archway before Dios added: 'Completion in three months. In
time for Inundation.'[12]
'What?'
'You are talking to the 1,398th monarch,' said Dios icily. Ptaclusp swallowed.
'I'm sorry,' he whispered, 'I mean, what?, O great king. I mean, block haulage
alone will take. Uh.' The architect's lips trembled as he tried out various
comments and, in his imagination, ran them full tilt into Dios's stare. 'Tsort
wasn't built in a day,' he mumbled.
'We do not believe we laid the specifications for that job,' said Dios. He gave
Ptaclusp a smile. In some ways it was worse than everything else. 'We will, of
course,' he said, 'pay extra.'
'But you never pa-' Ptaclusp began, and then sagged.
'The penalties for not completing on time will, of course, be terrible,' said
Dios. 'The usual clause.'
Ptaclusp hadn't the nerve left to argue. 'Of course,' he said, utterly defeated.
'It is an honour. Will your eminences excuse me? There are still some hours of
daylight left.'
Teppic nodded.
'Thank you,' said the architect. 'May your loins be truly fruitful. Saving your
presence, Lord Dios.'
They heard him running down the steps outside.
'It will be magnificent. Too big, but - magnificent,' said Dios. He looked out
between the pillars at the necropolic panorama on the far bank of the Djel.
'Magnificent,' he repeated. He winced once more at the stab of pain in his leg.
Ah. He'd have to cross the river again tonight, no doubt of it. He'd been
foolish, putting it off for days. But it would be unthinkable not to be in a
position to serve the kingdom properly.
'Something wrong, Dios?' said Teppic.
'Sire?'
'You looked a bit pale, I thought.' A look of panic flickered over Dios's
wrinkled features. He pulled himself upright.
'I assure you, sire, I am in the best of health. The best of health, sire!'
'You don't think you've been overdoing it, do you?'
This time there was no mistaking the expression of terror.
'Overdoing what, sire?'
'You're always bustling, Dios. First one up, last one to bed. You should take it
easy.'
'I exist only to serve, sire,' said Dios, firmly. 'I exist only to serve.'
Teppic joined him on the balcony. The early evening sun glowed on a man-made
mountain range. This was only the central massif; the pyramids stretched from
the delta all the way up to the second cataract, where the Djel disappeared into
the mountains. And the pyramids occupied the best land, near the river. Even the
farmers would have considered it sacrilegious to suggest anything different.
Some of the pyramids were small, and made of rough-hewn blocks that contrived to
look far older than the mountains that fenced the valley from the high desert.
After all, mountains had always been there. Words like 'young' and 'old' didn't
apply to them. But those first pyramids had been built by human beings, little
bags of thinking water held up briefly by fragile accumulations of calcium, who
had cut rocks into pieces and then painfully put them back together again in a
better shape. They were old.
Over the millennia the fashions had fluctuated. Later pyramids were smooth and
sharp, or flattened and tiled with mica. Even the steepest of them, Teppic
mused, wouldn't rate more than 1.O on any edificeer's scale, although some of
the stelae and temples, which flocked around the base of the pyramids like
tugboats around the dreadnoughts of eternity, could be worthy of attention.
Dreadnoughts of eternity, he thought, sailing ponderously through the mists of
Time with every passenger travelling first class . . .
A few stars had been let out early. Teppic looked up at them. Perhaps, he
thought, there is life somewhere else. On the stars, maybe. If it's true that
there are billions of universes stacked alongside one another, the thickness of
a thought apart, then there must be people elsewhere.
But wherever they are, no matter how mightily they try, no matter how
magnificent the effort, they surely can't manage to be as godawfully stupid as
us. I mean, we work at it. We were given a spark of it to start with, but over
hundreds of thousands of years we've really improved on it.
He turned to Dios, feeling that he ought to repair a little bit of the damage.
'You can feel the age radiating off them, can't you,' he said conversationally.
'Pardon, sire?'
'The pyramids, Dios. They're so old.'
Dios glanced vaguely across the river. 'Are they?' he said. 'Yes, I suppose they
are.'
'Will you get one?' said Teppic.
'A pyramid?' said Dios. 'Sire, I have one already. It pleased one of your
forebears to make provision for me.'
'That must have been a great honour,' said Teppic. Dios nodded graciously. The
staterooms of forever were usually reserved for royalty.
'It is, of course, very small. Very plain. But it will suffice for my simple
needs.'
'Will it?' said Teppic, yawning. 'That's nice. And now, if you don't mind, I
think I'll turn in. It's been a long day.'
Dios bowed as though he was hinged in the middle. Teppic had noticed that Dios
had at least fifty finely-tuned ways of bowing, each one conveying subtle shades
of meaning. This one looked like No.3, I Am Your Humble Servant.
'And a very good day it was too, if I may say so, sire. Teppic was lost for
words. 'You thought so?' he said.
'The cloud effects at dawn were particularly effective.'
'They were? Oh. Do I have to do anything about the sunset?'
'Your majesty is pleased to joke,' said Dios. 'Sunsets happen by themselves,
sire. Haha.'
'Haha,' echoed Teppic.
Dios cracked his knuckles. 'The trick is in the sunrise,' he said.
The crumbling scrolls of Knot said that the great orange sun was eaten every
evening by the sky goddess, What, who saved one pip in time to grow a fresh sun
for next morning. And Dios knew that this was so.
The Book of Staying in The Pit said that the sun was the Eye of Yay, toiling
across the sky each day in His endless search for his toenails.[14] And Dios
knew that this was so.
The secret rituals of the Smoking Mirror held that the sun was in fact a round
hole in the spinning blue soap bubble of the goddess Nesh, opening into the
fiery real world beyond, and the stars were the holes that the rain comes
through. And Dios knew that this, also, was so.
Folk myth said the sun was a ball of fire which circled the world every day, and
that the world itself was carried through the everlasting void on the back of an
enormous turtle. And Dios also knew that this was so, although it gave him a bit
of trouble.
And Dios knew that Net was the Supreme God, and that Fon was the Supreme God,
and so were Hast, Set, Bin, Sot, Ic, Dhek, and Ptooie; that Herpetine Triskeles
alone ruled the world of the dead, and so did Syncope, and Silur the
Catfish-Headed God, and Orexis-Nupt.
Dios was maximum high priest to a national religion that had fermented and
accreted and bubbled for more than seven thousand years and never threw a god
away in case it turned out to be useful. He knew that a great many
mutually-contradictory things were all true. If they were not, then ritual and
belief were as nothing, and if they were nothing, then the world did not exist.
As a result of this sort of thinking, the priests of the Djel could give mind
room to a collection of ideas that would make even a quantum mechanic give in
and hand back his toolbox.
Dios's staff knocked echoes from the stones as he limped along in the darkness
down little-frequented passages until he emerged on a small jetty. Untying the
boat there, the high priest climbed in with difficulty, unshipped the oars and
pushed himself out into the turbid waters of the dark Djel.
His hands and feet felt too cold. Foolish, foolish. He should have done this
before.
The boat jerked slowly into midstream as full night rolled over the valley. On
the far bank, in response to the ancient laws, the pyramids started to light the
sky.

Lights also burned late in the house of Ptaclusp Associates, Necropolitan
Builders to the Dynasties. The father and his twin Sons were hunched over the
huge wax designing tray, arguing.
'It's not as if they ever pay,' said Ptaclusp IIa. 'I mean it's not just a case
of not being able to, they don't seem to have grasped the idea. At least
dynasties like Tsort pay up within a hundred years or so. Why didn't you-'
'We've built pyramids along the Djel for the last three thousand years,' said
his father stiffly, 'and we haven't lost by it, have we? No, we haven't. Because
the other kingdoms look to the Djel, they say there's a family that really knows
its pyramids, connysewers, they say we'll have what they're having, if you
please, with knobs on. Anyway, they're real royalty,' he added, 'not like some
of the ones you get these days - here today, gone next millennium. They're half
gods, too. You don't expect real royalty to pay its way. That's one of the signs
of real royalty, not having any money.'
'You don't get more royal than them, then. You'd need a new word,' said IIa.
We're nearly royal in that case.'
'You don't understand business, my son. You think it's all book-keeping. Well,
it isn't.'
'It's a question of mass. And the power to weight ratio.' They both glared at
Ptaclusp IIb, who was sitting staring at the sketches. He was turning his stylus
over and over in his hands, which were trembling with barely-suppressed
excitement.
'We'll have to use granite for the lower slopes,' he said, talking to himself,
'the limestone wouldn't take it. Not with all the power flows. Which will be,
whooeee, they'll be big. I mean we're not talking razor blades here. This thing
could put an edge on a rolling pin.'
Ptaclusp rolled his eyes. He was only one generation into a dynasty and already
it was trouble. One son a born accountant, the other in love with this
new-fangled cosmic engineering. There hadn't been any such thing when he was a
lad, there was just architecture. You drew the plans, and then got in ten
thousand lads on time-and-a-half and double bubble at weekends. They just had to
pile the stuff up. You didn't have to be cosmic about it.
Descendants! The gods had seen fit to give him one son who charged you for the
amount of breath expended in saying 'Good morning', and another one who
worshipped geometry and stayed up all night designing aqueducts. You scrimped
and saved to send them to the best schools, and then they went and paid you back
by getting educated.
'What are you talking about?' he snapped.
'The discharge alone . . .' He pulled his abacus towards him and rattled the
pottery beads along the wires. 'Let's say we're talking twice the height of the
Executive model, which gives us a mass of. . . plus additional coded dimensions
of occult significance as per spec. . . we couldn't do this sort of thing even a
hundred years ago, you realise, not with the primitive techniques we had
then...' His finger became a blur.
IIa gave a snort and grabbed his own abacus.
'Limestone at two talents the ton. . .' he said. 'Wear and tear on tools . . .
masonry charges . . . demurrage . . . breakages . . . oh dear, oh dear . . .
on-cost . . . black marble at replacement prices . . .'
Ptaclusp sighed. Two abaci rattling in tandem the whole day long, one changing
the shape of the world and the other one deploring the cost. Whatever happened
to the two bits of wood and a plumbline?
The last beads clicked against the stops.
'It'd be a whole quantum leap in pyramidology,' said IIb, sitting back with a
messianic grin on his face.
'It'd be a whole kwa-' IIa began.
'Quantum,' said IIb, savouring the word.
'It'd be a whole quantum leap in bankruptcy,' said IIa.
'They'd have to invent a new word for that too.'
'It'd be worth it as a loss leader,' said IIb.
'Sure enough. When it comes to making a loss, we'll be in the lead,' said IIa
sourly.
'It'd practically glow! In millennia to come people will look at it and say
"That Ptaclusp, he knew his pyramids all right".'
'They'll call it Ptaclusp's Folly, you mean!'
By now the brothers were both standing up, their noses a few inches apart.
'The trouble with you, sibling, is that you know the cost of everything and the
value of nothing!'
'The trouble with you is - is - is that you don't!'
'Mankind must strive ever upwards!'
'Yes, on a sound financial footing, by Khuft!'
'The search for knowledge-'
'The search for probity-'
Ptaclusp left them to it and stood staring out at the yard, where, under the
glow of torches, the staff were doing a feverish stocktaking.
It'd been a small business when father passed it on to him - just a yard full of
blocks and various sphinxes, needles, steles and other stock items, and a thick
stack of unpaid bills, most of them addressed to the palace and respectfully
pointing out that our esteemed account presented nine hundred years ago appeared
to have been overlooked and prompt settlement would oblige. But it had been fun
in those days. There was just him, five thousand labourers, and Mrs Ptaclusp
doing the books.
You had to do pyramids, dad said. All the profit was in mastabas, small family
tombs, memorial needles and general jobbing necropoli, but if you didn't do
pyramids, you didn't do anything. The meanest garlic farmer, looking for
something neat and long lasting with maybe some green marble chippings but
within a budget, wouldn't go to a man without a pyramid to his name.
So he'd done pyramids, and they'd been good ones, not like some you saw these
days, with the wrong number of sides and walls you could put your foot through.
And yes, somehow they'd gone from strength to strength.
To build the biggest pyramid ever..
In three months.
With terrible penalties if it wasn't done on time. Dios hadn't specified how
terrible, but Ptaclusp knew his man and they probably involved crocodiles.
They'd be pretty terrible, all right...
He stared at the flickering light on the long avenues of statues, including the
one of bloody Hat the Vulture-Headed God of Unexpected Guests, bought on the
offchance years ago and turned down by the client owing to not being up to snuff
in the beak department and unshiftable ever since even at a discount.
The biggest pyramid ever . . .
And after you'd knocked your pipes out seeing to it that the nobility had their
tickets to eternity, were you allowed to turn your expertise homeward, i.e., a
bijou pyramidette for self and Mrs Ptaclusp, to ensure safe delivery into the
Netherworld? Of course not. Even dad had only been allowed to have a mastaba,
although it was one of the best on the river, he had to admit, that red-veined
marble had been ordered all the way from Howonderland, a lot of people had asked
for the same, it had been good for business, that's how dad would have liked it.
. .
The biggest pyramid ever . . .
And they'd never remember who was under it.
It didn't matter if they called it Ptaclusp's Folly or Ptaclusp's Glory. They'd
call it Ptaclusp's.
He surfaced from this pool of thought to hear his sons still arguing.
If this was his posterity, he'd take his chances with 600-ton limestone blocks.
At least they were quiet.
'Shut up, the pair of you,' he said.
They stopped, and sat down, grumbling.
'I've made up my mind,' he said.
IIb doodled fitfully with his stylus. IIa strummed his abacus.
'We're going to do it,' said Ptaclusp, and strode out of the room. 'And any son
who doesn't like it will be cast into the outer darkness where there is a
wailing and a crashing of teeth,' he called over his shoulder.
The two brothers, left to themselves, glowered at each other.
At last IIa said, 'What does "quantum" mean, anyway?'
IIb shrugged. 'It means add another nought,' he said.
'Oh,' said IIa, 'is that all?'

All along the river valley of the Djel the pyramids were flaring silently into
the night, discharging the accumulated power of the day.
Great soundless flames erupted from their capstones and danced upwards, jagged
as lightning, cold as ice.
For hundreds of miles the desert glittered with the constellations of the dead,
the aurora of antiquity. But along the valley of the Djel the lights ran
together in one solid ribbon of fire.

It was on the floor and it had a pillow at one end. It had to be a bed.
Teppic found he was doubting it as he tossed and turned, trying to find some
part of the mattress that was prepared to meet him halfway. This is stupid, he
thought, I grew up on beds like this. And pillows carved out of rock. I was born
in this palace, this is my heritage, I must be prepared to accept it . . .
I must order a proper bed and a feather pillow from Ankh, first thing in the
morning. I, the king, have said this shall be done.
He turned over, his head hitting the pillow with a thud.
And plumbing. What a great idea that was. It was amazing what you could do with
a hole in the ground.
Yes, plumbing. And bloody doors. Teppic definitely wasn't used to having several
attendants waiting on his will all the time, so performing his ablutions before
bed had been extremely embarrassing. And the people, too. He was definitely
going to get to know the people. It was wrong, all this skulking in palaces.
And how was a fellow supposed to sleep with the sky over the river glowing like
a firework?
Eventually sheer exhaustion wrestled his body into some zone between sleeping
and waking, and mad images stalked across his eyeballs.
There was the shame of his ancestors when future archaeologists translated the
as-yet unpainted frescoes of his reign: '"Squiggle, constipated eagle, wiggly
line, hippo's bottom, squiggle": And in the year of the Cycle of Cephnet the Sun
God Teppic had Plumbing Installed and Scorned the Pillows of his Forebears.'
He dreamed of Khuft - huge, bearded, speaking in thunder and lightning, calling
down the wrath of the heavens on this descendant who was betraying the noble
past.
Dios floated past his vision, explaining that as a result of an edict passed
several thousand years ago it was essential that he marry a cat.
Various-headed gods vied for his attention, explaining details of godhood, while
in the background a distant voice tried to attract his attention and screamed
something about not wanting to be buried under a load of stone. But he had no
time to concentrate on this, because he saw seven fat cows and seven thin cows,
one of them playing a trombone.
But that was an old dream, he dreamt that one nearly every night.
And then there was a man firing arrows at a tortoise . . .
And then he was walking over the desert and found a tiny pyramid, only a few
inches high. A wind sprang up and blew away the sand, only now it wasn't a wind,
it was the pyramid rising, sand tumbling down its gleaming sides .
And it grew bigger and bigger, bigger than the world, so that at last the
pyramid was so big that the whole world was a speck in the centre.
And in the centre of the pyramid, something very strange happened.
And the pyramid grew smaller, taking the world with it. and vanished . . .
Of course, when you're a pharaoh, you get a very high class of obscure dream.

Another day dawned, courtesy of the king, who was curled up on the bed and using
his rolled-up clothes as a pillow. Around the stone maze of the palace the
servants of the kingdom began to wake up.
Dios's boat slid gently through the water and bumped into the jetty. Dios
climbed out and hurried into the palace, bounding up the steps three at a time
and rubbing his hands together at the thought of a fresh day laid out before
him, every hour and ritual ticking neatly into place. So much to organise, so
much to be needed for . . .

The chief sculptor and maker of mummy cases folded up his measure.
'You done a good job there, Master Dil,' he said.
Dil nodded. There was no false modesty between craftsmen. The sculptor gave him
a nudge. 'What a team, eh?' he said. 'You pickle 'em, I crate 'em.'
Dil nodded, but rather more slowly. The sculptor looked down at the wax oval in
his hands.
'Can't say I think much of the death mask, mind,' he said. Gern, who was working
hard on the corner slab on one of the Queen's late cats, which he had been
allowed to do all by himself, looked up in horror.
'I done it very careful,' he said sulkily.
'That's the whole point,' said the sculptor.
'I know,' said Dil sadly, 'it's the nose, isn't it.'
'It was more the chin.'
'And the chin.'
'Yes.'
'Yes.'
They looked in gloomy silence at the waxen visage of the pharaoh. So did the
pharaoh.
'Nothing wrong with my chin.'
'You could put a beard on it,' said Dil eventually. 'It'd cover a lot of it,
would a beard.'
'There's still the nose.'
'You could take half an inch off that. And do something with the cheekbones.'
'Yes.'
'Yes.'
Gern was horrified. 'That's the face of our late king you're talking about,' he
said. 'You can't do that sort of thing! Anyway, people would notice.' He
hesitated. 'Wouldn't they?'
The two craftsmen eyed one another.
'Gern,' said Dil patiently, 'certainly they'll notice. But they won't say
anything. They expect us to, er, improve matters.'
'After all,' said the chief sculptor cheerfully, 'you don't think they're going
to step up and say "It's all wrong, he really had a face like a short-sighted
chicken", do you?'
'Thank you very much. Thank you very much indeed, I must say.' The pharaoh went
and sat by the cat. It seemed that people only had respect for the dead when
they thought the dead were listening.
'I suppose,' said the apprentice, with some uncertainty, 'he did look a bit ugly
compared to the frescoes.'
'That's the point, isn't it,' said Dil meaningfully. Gern's big honest spotty
face changed slowly, like a cratered landscape with clouds passing across it. It
was dawning on him that this came under the heading of initiation into ancient
craft secrets.
'You mean even the painters change the-' he began.
Dil frowned at him.
'We don't talk about it,' he said.
Gern tried to force his features into an expression of worthy seriousness.
'Oh,' he said. 'Yes. I see, master.'
The sculptor clapped him on the back.
'You're a bright lad, Gern,' he said. 'You catch on. After all, it's bad enough
being ugly when you're alive. Think how terrible it would be to be ugly in the
netherworld.'
King Teppicymon XXVII shook his head. We all have to look alike when we're
alive, he thought, and now they make sure we're identical when we're dead. What
a kingdom. He looked down and saw the soul of the late cat, which was washing
itself. When he was alive he'd hated the things, but just now it seemed
positively companionable. He patted it gingerly on its flat head. It purred for
a moment, and then attempted to strip the flesh from his hand. It was on a
definite hiding to nothing there.
He was aware with growing horror that the trio was now discussing a pyramid. His
pyramid. It was going to be the biggest one ever. It was going to go on a highly
fertile piece of sloping ground on a prime site in the necropolis. It was going
to make even the biggest existing pyramid look like something a child might
construct in a sand tray. It was going to be surrounded by marble gardens and
granite obelisks. It was going to be the greatest memorial ever built by a son
for his father.
The king groaned.

Ptaclusp groaned.
It had been better in his father's day. You just needed a bloody great heap of
log rollers and twenty years, which was useful because it kept everyone out of
trouble during Inundation, when all the fields were flooded. Now you just needed
a bright lad with a piece of chalk and the right incantations.
Mind you, it was impressive, if you liked that kind of thing.
Ptaclusp IIb walked around the great stone block, tidying an equation here,
highlighting a hermetic inscription there. He glanced up and gave his father a
brief nod.
Ptaclusp hurried back to the king, who was standing with his retinue on the
cliff overlooking the quarry, the sun gleaming off the mask. A royal visit, on
top of everything else
'We're ready, if it please you, O arc of the sky,' he said, breaking into a
sweat, hoping against hope that Oh gods. The king was going to Put Him at his
Ease again.
He looked imploringly at the high priest, who with the merest twitch of his
features indicated that there was nothing he proposed to do about it. This was
too much, he wasn't the only one to object to this, Dil the master embalmer had
been subjected to half an hour of having to Talk about his Family only
yesterday, it was wrong, people expected the king to stay in the palace, it was
too . . .
The king ambled towards him in a nonchalant way designed to make the master
builder feel he was among friends. Oh no, Ptaclusp thought, he's going to
Remember my Name.
'I must say you've done a tremendous amount in nine weeks, it's a very good
start. Er. It's Ptaclusp, isn't it?' said the king.
Ptaclusp swallowed. There was no help for it now.
'Yes, O hand upon the waters,' he said, 'O fount of-'
'I think "your majesty" or "sire" will do,' said Teppic. Ptaclusp panicked and
glanced fearfully at Dios, who winced but nodded again.
'The king wishes you to address him-' a look of pain crossed his face -
'informally. In the fashion of the barba - of foreign lands.'
'You must consider yourself a very fortunate man to have such talented and
hard-working sons,' said Teppic, staring down at the busy panorama of the
quarry.
'I . . . will, O . . . sire,' mumbled Ptaclusp, interpreting this as an order.
Why couldn't kings order people around like in the old days? You knew where you
were then, they didn't go round being charming and treating you as some sort of
equal, as if you could make the sun rise too.
'It must be a fascinating trade,' Teppic went on.
'As your sire wishes, sire,' said Ptaclusp. 'If your majesty would just give the
word-'
'And how exactly does all this work?'
'Your sire?' said Ptaclusp, horrified.
'You make the blocks fly, do you?'
'Yes, O sire.'
'That is very interesting. How do you do it?'
Ptaclusp nearly bit through his lip. Betray Craft secrets? He was horrified.
Against all expectation, Dios came to his aid.
'By means of certain secret signs and sigils, sire,' he said, 'into the origin
of which it is not wise to inquire. It is the wisdom of-' he paused '-the
modems.'
'So much quicker than all that heaving stuff around, I expect,' said Teppic.
'It had a certain glory, sire,' said Dios. 'Now, if I may suggest . . .
'Oh. Yes. Press on, by all means.'
Ptaclusp wiped his forehead, and ran to the edge of the quarry.
He waved a cloth.

All things are defined by names. Change the name, and you change the thing. Of
course there is a lot more to it than that, but paracosmically that is what it
boils down to.
Ptaclusp IIb tapped the stone lightly with his staff. The air above it wavered
in the heat and then, shedding a little dust, the block rose gently until it
bobbed a few feet off the ground, held in check by mooring ropes.
That was all there was to it. Teppic had expected some thunder, or at least a
gout of flame. But already the workers were clustering around another block, and
a couple of men were towing the first block down towards the site.
'Very impressive,' he said sadly.
'Indeed, sire,' said Dios. 'And now, we must go back to the palace. It will soon
be time for the Ceremony of the Third Hour.
'Yes, yes, all right,' snapped Teppic. 'Very well done, Ptaclusp. Keep up the
good work.'
Ptaclusp bowed like a seesaw in flustered excitement and confusion.
'Very good, your sire,' he said, and decided to go for the big one. 'May I show
your sire the latest plans?'
'The king has approved the plans already,' said Dios. 'And, excuse me if I am
mistaken, but it seems that the pyramid is well under construction.'
'Yes, yes, but,' said Ptaclusp, 'it occurred to us, this avenue here, you see,
overlooking the entrance, what a place, we thought, for a statue of for instance
Hat the Vulture-Headed God of Unexpected Guests at practically cost-'
Dios glanced at the sketches.
'Are those supposed to be wings?' he said.
'Not even cost, not even cost, tell you what I'll do-' said Ptaclusp
desperately.
'Is that a nose?' said Dios.
'More a beak, more a beak,' said Ptaclusp. 'Look, O priest, how about-'
'I think not,' said Dios. 'No. I really think not.' He scanned the quarry for
Teppic, groaned, thrust the sketches into the builder's hands and started to
run.
Teppic had strolled down the path to the waiting chariots, looking wistfully at
the bustle around him, and paused to watch a group of workers who were dressing
a corner piece. They froze when they felt his gaze on them, and stood sheepishly
watching him.
'Well well,' said Teppic, inspecting the stone, although all he knew about
stonemasonry could have been chiselled on a sand grain. 'What a splendid piece
of rock.'
He turned to the nearest man, whose mouth fell open.
'You're a stonemason, are you?' he said. 'That must be a very interesting job.'
The man's eyes bulged. He dropped his chisel. 'Erk,' he said.
A hundred yards away Dios's robes flapped around his legs as he pounded down the
path. He grasped the hem and galloped along, sandals flapping.
'What's your name?' said Teppic. 'Aaaargle,' said the man, terrified.
'Well, jolly good,' said Teppic, and took his unresisting hand and shook it.
'Sire!' Dios bellowed. 'No!'
And the mason spun away, holding his right hand by the wrist, fighting it,
screaming . . .

Teppic gripped the arms of the throne and glared at the high priest.
'But it's a gesture of fellowship, nothing more. Where I come from-'
'Where you come from, sire, is here!' thundered Dios.
'But, good grief, cutting it off? It's too cruel!'
Dios stepped forward. Now his voice was back to its normal oil-smooth tones.
'Cruel, sire? But it will be done with precision and care, with drugs to take
away the pain. He will certainly live.
'But why?'
'I did explain, sire. He cannot use the hand again without defiling it. He is a
devout man and knows this very well. You see, sire, you are a god, sire.'
'But you can touch me. So can the servants!'
'I am a priest, sire,' said Dios gently. 'And the servants have special
dispensation.'
Teppic bit his lip.
'This is barbaric,' he said.
Dios's features did not move.
'It will not be done,' Teppic said. 'I am the king. I forbid it to be done, do
you understand?'
Dios bowed. Teppic recognised No.49, Horrified Disdain.
'Your wish will certainly be done, O fountain of all wisdom. Although, of
course, the man himself may take matters into, if you will excuse me, his own
hands.'
'What do you mean?' snapped Teppic.
'Sire, if his colleagues had not stopped him he would have done it himself. With
a chisel, I understand.'
Teppic stared at him and thought, I am a stranger in a familiar land.
'I see,' he said eventually.
He thought a little further.
'Then the - operation is to be done with all care, and the man is to be given a
pension afterwards, d'you see?'
'As you wish, sire.'
'A proper one, too.'
'Indeed, sire. A golden handshake, sire,' said Dios impassively.
'And perhaps we can find him some light job around the palace?'
'As a one-handed stonemason, sire?' Dios's left eyebrow arched a fraction.
'As whatever, Dios.'
'Certainly, sire. As you wish. I will undertake to see if we are currently
short-handed in any department.'
Teppic glared at him. 'I am the king, you know,' he said sharply.
'The fact attends me with every waking hour, sire.'
'Dios?' said Teppic, as the high priest was leaving.
'Sire?'
'I ordered a feather bed from Ankh-Morpork some weeks ago. I suppose you would
not know what became of it?'
Dios waved his hands in an expressive gesture. 'I gather, sire, that there is
considerable pirate activity off the Khalian coast,' he said.
'Doubtless the pirates are also responsible for the non-appearance of the expert
from the Guild of Plumbers and Dunnikindivers?' Teppic said sourly.[15]
'Yes, sire. Or possibly bandits, sire.'
'Or perhaps a giant two-headed bird swooped down and carried him off,' said
Teppic.
'All things are possible, sire,' said the high priest, his face radiating
politeness.
'You may go, Dios.'
'Sire. May I remind you, sire, that the emissaries from Tsort and Ephebe will be
attending you at the fifth hour.'
'Yes. You may go.'
Teppic was left alone, or at least as alone as he ever was, which meant that he
was all by himself except for two fan wavers, a butler, two enormous Howonder
guards by the door, and a couple of handmaidens.
Oh, yes. Handmaidens. He hadn't quite come to terms with the handmaidens yet.
Presumably Dios chose them, as he seemed to oversee everything in the palace,
and he had shown surprisingly good taste in the matter of, for example, olive
skins, bosoms and legs. The clothing these two wore would between them have
covered a small saucer. And this was odd, because the net effect was to turn
them into two attractive and mobile pieces of furniture, as sexless as pillars.
Teppic sighed with the recollection of women in Ankh-Morpork who could be
clothed from neck to ankle in brocade and still cause a classroom full of boys
to blush to the roots of their hair.
He reached down for the fruit bowl. One of the girls immediately grasped his
hand, moved it gently aside, and took a grape.
'Please don't peel it,' said Teppic. 'The peel's the best part. Full of
nourishing vitamins and minerals. Only I don't suppose you've heard about them,
have you, they've only been invented recently,' he added, mainly to himself. 'I
mean, within the last seven thousand years,' he finished sourly.
So much for time flowing past, he thought glumly. It might do that everywhere
else, but not here. Here it just piles up, like snow. It's as though the
pyramids slow us down, like those things they used on the boat, whatd'youcallem,
sea anchors. Tomorrow here is just like yesterday, warmed over.
She peeled the grape anyway, while the snowflake seconds drifted down.

At the site of the Great Pyramid the huge blocks of stone floated into place
like an explosion in reverse. They were flowing between the quarry and the site,
drifting silently across the landscape above deep rectangular shadows.
'I've got to hand it to you,' said Ptaclusp to his son, as they stood side by
side in the observation tower. 'It's astonishing. One day people will wonder how
we did it.'
'All that business with the log rollers and the whips is old hat,' said IIb.
'You-can throw them away.' The young architect smiled, but there was a manic
hint to the rictus.
It was astonishing. It was more astonishing than it ought to be. He kept getting
the feeling that the pyramid was . . .
He shook himself mentally. He should be ashamed of that sort of thinking. You
could get superstitious if you weren't careful, in this job.
It was natural for things to form a pyramid - well, a cone, anyway. He'd
experimented this morning. Grain, salt, . . . not water, though, that'd been a
mistake. But a pyramid was only a neat cone, wasn't it, a cone which had decided
to be a bit tidier.
Perhaps he'd overdone it just a gnat on the paracosmic measurements?
His father slapped him on the back.
'Very well done,' he repeated. 'You know, it almost looks as though it's
building itself.'
IIb yelped and bit his wrist, a childish trait that he always resorted to when
he was nervous. Ptaclusp didn't notice, because at that moment one of the
foremen was running to the foot of the tower, waving his ceremonial measuring
rod.
Ptaclusp leaned over.
'What?' he demanded.
'I said, please to come at once, O master!'
On the pyramid itself, on the working surface about halfway up, where some of
the detailed work on the inner chambers was in progress, the word 'impressive'
was no longer appropriate. The word 'terrifying' seemed to fit the bill.
Blocks were stacking up in the sky overhead in a giant, slow dance, passing and
re-passing, their mahouts yelling at one another and at the luckless controllers
down on the pyramid top, who were trying to shout instructions above the noise.
Ptaclusp waded into the cluster of workers around the centre. Here, at least,
there was silence. Dead silence.
'All right, all right,' he said. 'What's going . . . oh.' Ptaclusp IIb peered
over his father's shoulder, and stuck his wrist in his mouth.
The thing was wrinkled. It was ancient. It clearly had once been a living thing.
It lay on the slab like a very obscene prune.
'It was my lunch,' said the chief plasterer. 'It was my bloody lunch. I was
really looking forward to that apple.'
'But it can't start yet,' whispered IIb. 'It can't form temporal nodes yet, I
mean, how does it know it's going to be a pyramid?'
'I put my hand down for it, and it felt just like . . . it felt pretty
unpleasant,' the plasterer complained.
'And it's a negative node, too,' added IIb. 'We shouldn't be getting them at
all.'
'Is it still there?' said Ptaclusp, and added, 'Tell me yes.' 'If more blocks
have been set into position it won't be,' said his son, looking around wildly.
'As the centre of mass changes, you see, the nodes will be pulled around.'
Ptaclusp pulled the young man to one side.
'What are you telling me now?' he demanded, in a camel whisper.[16]
'We ought to put a cap on it,' mumbled IIb. 'Flare off the trapped time.
Wouldn't be any problems then . . .'
'How can we cap it? It isn't damn well finished,' said Ptaclusp. 'What have you
been and gone and done? Pyramids don't start accumulating until they're
finished. Until they're pyramids, see? Pyramid energy, see? Named after
pyramids. That's why it's called pyramid energy.'
'It must be something to do with the mass, or something,' the architect
hazarded, 'and the speed of construction. The time is getting trapped in the
fabric. I mean, in theory you could get small nodes during construction, but
they'd be so weak you wouldn't notice; if you went and stood in one maybe you'd
become a few hours older or younger or-' he began to gabble.
'I recall when we did Kheneth XIV's tomb the fresco painter said it took him two
hours to do the painting in the Queen's Room, and we said it was three days and
fined him,' said Ptaclusp, slowly. 'There was a lot of Guild fuss, I remember.'
'You just said that,' said IIb.
'Said what?'
'About the fresco painter. Just a moment ago.
'No, I didn't. You couldn't have been listening,' said Placlusp.
'Could have sworn you did. Anyway, this is worse than that business,' said his
son. 'And it's probably going to happen again.'
'We can expect more like it?'
'Yes,' said IIb. 'We shouldn't get negative nodes, but it looks as though we
will. We can expect fast flows and reverse flows and probably even short loops.
I'm afraid we can expect all kinds of temporal anomalies. We'd better get the
men off.'
'I suppose you couldn't work out a way we could get them to work in fast time
and pay them for slow time?' said Ptaclusp. 'It's just a thought. Your brother's
bound to suggest it.'
'No! Keep everyone off! We'll get the blocks in and cap it first!'
'All right, all right. I was just thinking out loud. As if we didn't have enough
problems . . .'
Ptaclusp waded into the cluster of workers around the centre. Here, at least,
there was silence. Dead silence.
'All right, all right,' he said. 'What's going . . . oh.' Ptaclusp IIb peered
over his father's shoulder, and stuck his wrist in his mouth.
The thing was wrinkled. It was ancient. It clearly had once been a living thing.
It lay on the slab like a very obscene prune.
'It was my lunch,' said the chief plasterer. 'It was my bloody lunch. I was
really looking forward to that apple.' Ptaclusp hesitated. This all seemed very
familiar. He'd had this feeling before. An overwhelming sensation of reja
vu[17]. He met the horrified gaze of his son. Together, dreading what they might
see, they turned around slowly. They saw themselves standing behind themselves,
bickering over something IIb was swearing that he had already heard.
He has, too, Ptaclusp realised in dread. That's me over there. I look a lot
different from the outside. And it's me over here, too. As well. Also.
It's a loop. Just like in the river, a tiny whirlpool, only it's in the flow of
time. And I've just gone round it twice.
The other Ptaclusp looked up at him.
There was a long, agonising moment of temporal strain, a noise like a mouse
blowing bubblegum, and the loop broke, and the figure faded.
'I know what's causing it,' muttered IIb indistinctly, because of his wrist. 'I
know the pyramid isn't complete, but it will be, so the effects are sort of
echoing backwards, dad, we ought to stop right now, it's too big, I was wrong-
'Shut up. Can you work out where the nodes will form?' said Ptaclusp. 'And come
away over here, all the lads are staring. Pull yourself together, son.'
IIb instinctively put his hand to his belt abacus.
'Well, yes, probably,' he said. 'It's just a function of mass distribution and-'

'Right,' said the builder firmly. 'Start doing it. And then get all the foremen
to come and see me.'
There was a glint like mica in Ptaclusp's eye. His jaw was squared like a block
of granite. Maybe it's the pyramid that's got me thinking like this, he said,
I'm thinking fast, I know it.
'And get your brother up here, too,' he added.
It is the pyramid effect. I'm remembering an idea I'm going to have.
Best not to think too hard about that. Be practical.
He stared around at the half-completed site. The gods knew we couldn't do it in
time, he said. Now we don't have to. We can take as long as we like!
'Are you all right?' said IIb. 'Dad, are you all right?'
'Was that one of your time loops?' said Ptaclusp dreamily. What an idea! No-one
would ever beat them on a contract ever again, they'd win bonuses for completion
and it didn't matter how long it took!
'No! Dad, we ought-'
'But you're sure you can work out where these loops will occur, are you?'
'Yes, I expect so, but-'
'Good.' Ptaclusp was trembling with excitement. Maybe they'd have to pay the men
more, but it would be worth it, and IIa would be bound to think up some sort of
scheme, finance was nearly as good as magic. The lads would have to accept it.
After all, they'd complained about working with free men, they'd complained
about working with Howondanians, they'd complained about working with everyone
except proper paid-up Guild members. So they could hardly complain about working
with themselves. IIb stepped back, and gripped the abacus for reassurance.
'Dad,' he said cautiously, 'what are you thinking about?' Ptaclusp beamed at
him. 'Doppelgangs,' he said.

Politics was more interesting. Teppic felt that here, at least, he could make a
contribution.
Djelibeybi was old. It was respected. But it was also small and in the
sword-edged sense, which was what seemed to matter these days, had no power. It
wasn't always thus, as Dios told it. Once it had ruled the world by sheer force
of nobility, hardly needing the standing army of twenty-five thousand men it had
in those high days.
Now it wielded a more subtle power as a narrow state between the huge and
thrusting empires of Tsort and Ephebe, each one both a threat and a shield. For
more than a thousand years the kings along the Djel had, with extreme diplomacy,
exquisite manners and the footwork of a centipede on adrenaline, kept the peace
along the whole widdershins side of the continent. Merely having existed for
seven thousand years can be a formidable weapon, if you use it properly.
'You mean we're neutral ground?' said Teppic.
'Tsort is a desert culture like us,' said Dios, steepling his hands. 'We have
helped to shape it over the years. As for Ephebe-' He sniffed. 'They have some
very strange beliefs.'
'How do you mean?'
'They believe the world is run by geometry, sire. All lines and angles and
numbers. That sort of thing, sire-' Dios frowned - 'can lead to some very
unsound ideas.'
'Ah,' said Teppic, resolving to learn more about unsound ideas as soon as
possible. 'So we're secretly on the side of Tsort, yes?'
'No. It is important that Ephebe remains strong.'
'But we've more in common with Tsort?'
'So we allow them to believe, sire.'
'But they are a desert culture?'
Dios smiled. 'I am afraid they don't take pyramids seriously, sire.'
Teppic considered all this.
'So whose side are we really on?'
'Our own, sire. There is always a way. Always remember, sire, that your family
was on its third dynasty before our neighbours had worked out, sire, how babies
are made.'
The Tsort delegation did indeed appear to have studied Djeli culture
assiduously, almost frantically. It was also clear that they hadn't begun to
understand it; they'd merely borrowed as many bits as seemed useful and then put
them together in subtly wrong ways. For example, to a man they employed the
Three-Turning-Walk, as portrayed on friezes, and only used by the Djeli court on
certain occasions. Occasional grimaces crossed their faces as their vertebrae
protested.
They were also wearing the Khruspids of Morning and the bangles of Going Forth,
as well as the kilt of Yet with, and no wonder even the maidens on fan duty were
hiding their smiles, matching greaves![18]
Even Teppic had to cough hurriedly. But then, he thought, they don't know any
better. They're like children.
And this thought was followed by another one which added, These children could
wipe us off the map in one hour.
Hot on the synapses of the other two came a third thought, which said: It's only
clothes, for goodness sake, you're beginning to take it all seriously.
The group from Ephebe were more sensibly dressed in white togas. They had a
certain sameness about them, as if somewhere in the country there was a little
press that stamped out small bald men with curly white beards.
The two parties halted before the throne, and bowed.
'Halo,' said Teppic.
'His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of
the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret
Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the
High-Born One, the Never-Dying King, bids you welcome and commands you to take
wine with him,' said Dios, clapping his hands for a butler.
'Oh yes,' said Teppic. 'Do sit down, won't you?'
'His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of
the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret
Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the
High-Born One, the Never-Dying King, commands you to be seated,' said Dios.
Teppic racked his brains for a suitable speech. He'd heard plenty in
Ankh-Morpork. They were probably the same the whole world over.
'I'm sure we shall get on-'
'His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of
the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret
Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the
High-Born One, the Never-Dying King, bids you harken!' Dios boomed.
'-long history of friendship-'
'Harken to the wisdom of His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the
Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun,
Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the
Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King!'
The echoes died away.
'Could I have a word with you a moment, Dios?'
The high priest leaned down.
'Is all this necessary?' hissed Teppic.
Dios's aquiline features took on the wooden expression of one who is wrestling
with an unfamiliar concept.
'Of course, sire. It is traditional,' he said, at last.
'I thought I was supposed to talk to these people. You know, about boundaries
and trade and so on. I've been doing a lot of thinking about it and I've got
several ideas. I mean, it's going to be a little difficult if you're going to
keep shouting.'
Dios gave him a polite smile.
'Oh no, sire. That has all been sorted out, sire. I met with them this morning.'

'What am I supposed to do, then?' Dios made a slight circling motion with his
hand.
'Just as you wish, sire. It is normal to smile a little, and put them at their
ease.'
'Is that all'
'Sire could ask them whether they enjoy being diplomats, sire,' said Dios. He
met Teppic's glare with eyes as expressionless as mirrors.
'I am the king,' Teppic hissed.
'Certainly, sire. It would not do to sully the office with mere matters of
leaden state, sire. Tomorrow, sire, you will be holding supreme court. A very
fit office for a monarch, sire.'
'Ah. Yes.'

It was quite complicated. Teppic listened carefully to the case, which was
alleged cattle theft compounded by Djeli's onion-layered land laws. This is what
it should be all about, he thought. No-one else can work out who owns the bloody
ox, this is the sort of thing kings have to do. Now, let's see, five years ago,
he sold the ox to him, but as it turned out-
He looked from the face of one worried farmer to the other. They were both
clutching their ragged straw hats close to their chests, and both of them wore
the paralysed wooden expressions of simple men who, in pursuit of their
parochial disagreement, now found themselves on a marble floor in a great room
with their god enthroned before their very eyes. Teppic didn't doubt that either
one would cheerfully give up all rights to the wretched creature in exchange for
being ten miles away.
It's a fairly mature ox, he thought, time it was slaughtered, even if it's his
it's been fattening on his neighbour's land all these years, half each would be
about right, they're really going to remember this judgement .
He raised the Sickle of Justice.
'His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of
the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret
Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the
High-Born One, the Never-Dying King, will give judgement! Cower to the justice
of His Greatness the King Tep-'
Teppic cut Dios off in mid-intone.
'Having listened to both sides of the case,' he said firmly, the mask giving it
a slight boom, 'and, being impressed by the argument and counter-argument, it
seems to us only just that the beast in question should be slaughtered without
delay and shared with all fairness between both plaintiff and defendant.'
He sat back. They'll call me Teppic the Wise, he thought. The common people go
for this sort of thing.
The farmers gave him a long blank stare. Then, as if they were both mounted on
turntables, they turned and looked to where Dios was sitting in his place on the
steps in a group of lesser priests.
Dios stood up, smoothed his plain robe, and extended the staff.
'Harken to the interpreted wisdom of His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII,
Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque
of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the
Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King,' he said. 'It
is our divine judgement that the beast in dispute is the property of Rhumusphut.
It is our divine judgement that the beast be sacrificed upon the altar of the
Concourse of Gods in thanks for the attention of Our Divine Self. It is our
further judgement that both Rhumusphut and Ktoffle work a further three days in
the fields of the King in payment for this judgement.'
Dios raised his head until he was looking along his fearsome nose right into
Teppic's mask. He raised both hands.
'Mighty is the wisdom of His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the
Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun,
Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the
Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King!'
The farmers bobbed in terrified gratitude and backed out of the presence, framed
between the guards.
'Dios,' said Teppic, levelly.
'Sire?'
'Just attend upon me a moment, please?'
'Sire?' repeated Dios, materialising by the throne.
'I could not help noticing, Dios, excuse me if I am wrong, a certain flourish in
the translation there.'
The priest looked surprised.
'Indeed no, sire. I was most precise in relaying your decision, saving only to
refine the detail in accordance with precedent and tradition.'
'How was that? The damn creature really belonged to both of them!'
'But Rhumusphut is known to be punctilious in his devotions, sire, seeking every
opportunity to laud and magnify the gods, whereas Ktoffle has been known to
harbour foolish thoughts.'
'What's that got to do with justice?'
'Everything, sire,' said Dios smoothly.
'But now neither of them has the ox!'
'Quite so, sire. But Ktoffle does not have it because he does not deserve it,
while Rhumusphut, by his sacrifice, has ensured himself greater stature in the
netherworld.'
'And you'll eat beef tonight, I suppose,' said Teppic. It was like a blow;
Teppic might as well have picked up the throne and hit the priest with it. Dios
took a step backward, aghast, his eyes two brief pools of pain. When he spoke,
there was a raw edge to his voice.
'I do not eat meat, sire,' he said. 'It dilutes and tarnishes the soul. May I
summon the next case, sire?'
Teppic nodded. 'Very well.'
The next case was a dispute over the rent of a hundred square yards of riverside
land. Teppic listened carefully. Good growing land was at a premium in Djeli,
since the pyramids took up so much of it. It was a serious matter.
It was especially serious because the land's tenant was by all accounts
hard-working and conscientious, while its actual owner was clearly rich and
objectionable[19]. Unfortunately, however one chose to stack the facts, he was
also in the right.
Teppic thought deeply, and then squinted at Dios. The priest nodded at him.
'It seems to me-' said Teppic, as fast as possible but not fast enough.
'Harken to the judgement of His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of
the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the
Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way,
the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King!'
'It seems to me - to us,' Teppic repeated, 'that, taking all matters in
consideration beyond those of mere mortal artifice, the true and just outcome in
this matter-' He paused. This, he thought, isn't how a good king speaks.
'The landlord has been weighed in the balance and found wanting,' he boomed
through the mask's mouth slit. 'We find for the tenant.'
As one man the court turned to Dios, who held a whispered consultation with the
other priests and then stood up.
'Hear now the interpreted word of His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord
of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of
the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the
Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King! Ptorne the
farmer will at once pay 18 toons in back rent to Prince Imtebos! Prince Imbetos
will at once pay 12 toons into the temple offerings of the gods of the river!
Long live the king! Bring on the next case!'
Teppic beckoned to Dios again.
'Is there any point in me being here?' he demanded in an overheated whisper.
'Please be calm, sire. If you were not here, how would the people know that
justice had been done?'
'But you twist everything I say!'
'No, sire. Sire, you give the judgement of the man. I interpret the judgement of
the king.'
'I see,' said Teppic grimly. 'Well, from now on-'
There was a commotion outside the hall. Clearly there was a prisoner outside who
was less than confident in the king's justice, and the king didn't blame him. He
wasn't at all happy about it, either.
It turned out to be a dark-haired girl, struggling in the arms of two guards and
giving them the kind of blows with fist and heel that a man would blush to give.
She wasn't wearing the right kind of costume for the job, either. It would be
barely adequate for lying around peeling grapes in.
She saw Teppic and, to his secret delight, flashed him a glance of pure hatred.
After an afternoon of being treated like a mentally-deficient statue it was a
pleasure to find someone prepared to take an interest in him.
He didn't know what she had done, but judging by the thumps she was landing on
the guards it was a pretty good bet that she had done it to the very limits of
her ability.
Dios bent down to the level of the mask's ear holes.
'Her name is Ptraci,' he said. 'A handmaiden of your father. She has refused to
take the potion.'
'What potion?' said Teppic.
'It is customary for a dead king to take servants with him into the netherworld,
sire.'
Teppic nodded gloomily. It was a jealously-guarded privilege, the only way a
penniless servant could ensure immortality. He remembered grandfather's funeral,
and the discreet clamour of the old man's personal servants. It had made father
depressed for days.
'Yes, but it's not compulsory,' he said.
'Yes, sire. It is not compulsory.'
'Father had plenty of servants.'
'I gather she was his favourite, sire.'
'What exactly has she done wrong, then?'
Dios sighed, as one might if one were explaining things to an extremely backward
child.
'She has refused to take the potion, sire.'
'Sorry. I thought you said it wasn't compulsory, Dios.'
'Yes, sire. It is not, sire. It is entirely voluntary. It is an act of free
will. And she has refused it, sire.'
'Ah. One of those situations,' said Teppic. Djelibeybi was built on those sort
of situations. Trying to understand them could drive you mad. If one of his
ancestors had decreed that night was day, people would go around groping in the
light.
He leaned forward.
'Step forward, young lady,' he said.
She looked at Dios.
'His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII-'
'Do we have to go all through that every time?'
'Yes, sire - Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman
of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon,
Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King,
bids you declare your guilt!'
The girl shook herself out of the guards' grip and faced Teppic, trembling with
terror.
'He told me he didn't want to be buried in a pyramid,' she said. 'He said the
idea of those millions of tons of rock on top of him gave him nightmares. I
don't want to die yet!'
'You refuse to gladly take the poison?' said Dios.
'Yes!'
'But, child,' said Dios, 'then the king will have you put to death anyway.
Surely it is better to go honourably, to a worthy life in the netherworld?'
'I don't want to be a servant in the netherworld!'
There was a groan of horror from the assembled priests. Dios nodded.
'Then the Eater of Souls will take you,' he said. 'Sire, we look to your
judgement.'
Teppic realised he was staring at the girl. There was something hauntingly
familiar about her which he couldn't quite put his finger on. 'Let her go,' he
said.
'His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of
the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret
Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the
High-Born One, the Never-Dying King, has spoken! Tomorrow at dawn you will be
cast to the crocodiles of the river. Great is the wisdom of the king!'
Ptraci turned and glared at Teppic. He said nothing. He did not dare, for fear
of what it might become.
She went away quietly, which was worse than sobbing or shouting.
'That is the last case, sire,' said Dios.
'I will retire to my quarters,' said Teppic coldly. 'I have much to think
about.'
'Therefore I will have dinner sent in,' said the priest. 'It will be roast
chicken.'
'I hate chicken.'
Dios smiled. 'No, sire. On Wednesdays the king always enjoys chicken, sire.'

The pyramids flared. The light they cast on the landscape was curiously subdued,
grainy, almost grey, but over the capstone of each tomb a zigzag flame crackled
towards the sky.
A faint click of metal and stone sprang Ptraci from a fitful doze into extreme
wakefulness. She stood up very carefully and crept towards the window.
Unlike proper cell windows, which should be large and airy and requiring only
the removal of a few inconvenient iron bars to ensure the escape of any
captives, this window was a slit six inches wide. Seven thousand years had
taught the kings along the Djel that cells should be designed to keep prisoners
in. The only way they could get out through this slit was in bits.
But there was a shadow against the pyramid light, and a voice said, 'Psst.'
She flattened herself against the wall and tried to reach up to the slit.
'Who are you?'
'I'm here to help you. Oh damn. Do they call this a window? Look, I'm lowering a
rope.'
A thick silken cord, knotted at intervals, dropped past her shoulder. She stared
at it for a second or two, and then kicked off her curly-toed shoes and climbed
up it.
The face on the other side of the slit was half-concealed by a black hood, but
she could just make out a worried expression.
'Don't despair,' it said.
'I wasn't despairing. I was trying to get some sleep.'
'Oh. Pardon me, I'm sure. I'll just go away and leave you, shall I?'
'But in the morning I shall wake up and then I'll despair. What are you standing
on, demon?'
'Do you know what a crampon is?'
'No.'
'Well, it's two of them.'
They stared at each other in silence.
'Okay,' said the face at last. 'I'll have to go around and come in through the
door. Don't go away.' And with that it vanished upwards.
Ptraci let herself slide back down to the chilly stones of the floor. Come in
through the door! She wondered how it could manage that. Humans would need to
open it first.
She crouched in the furthest corner of the cell, staring at the small rectangle
of wood.
Long minutes went past. At one point she thought she heard a tiny noise, like a
gasp.
A little later there was subtle clink of metal, so slight as to be almost beyond
the range of hearing.
More time wound on to the spool of eternity and then the silence beyond the
cell, which had been the silence caused by absence of sound, very slowly became
the silence caused by someone making no noise.
She thought: It's right outside the door.
There was a pause in which Teppic oiled all the bolts and hinges so that, when
he made the final assault, the door swished open in heart-gripping
noiselessness.
'I say?' said a voice in the darkness.
Ptraci pressed herself still further into the corner.
'Look, I've come to rescue you.'
Now she could make out a blacker shadow in the flarelight. It stepped forward
with rather more uncertainty than she would have expected from a demon.
'Are you coming or not?' it said. 'I've only knocked out the guards, it's not
their fault, but we haven't got a lot of time.'
'I'm to be thrown to the crocodiles in the morning,' whispered Ptraci. 'The king
himself decreed it.'
'He probably made a mistake.'
Ptraci's eyes widened in horrified disbelief.
'The Soul Eater will take me!' she said.
'Do you want it to?'
Ptraci hesitated.
'Well, then,' said the figure, and took her unresisting hand. He led her out of
the cell, where she nearly tripped over the prone body of a guard.
'Who is in the other cells?' he said, pointing to the line of doors along the
passage.
'I don't know,' said Ptraci.
'Let's find out, shall we?'
The figure touched a can to the bolts and hinges of the next door and pushed it
open. The flare from the narrow window illuminated a middle-aged man, seated
cross-legged on the floor.
'I'm here to rescue you,' said the demon. The man peered up at him.
'Rescue?' he said.
'Yes. Why are you here?'
The man hung his head. 'I spoke blasphemy against the king.'
'How did you do that?'
'I dropped a rock on my foot. Now my tongue is to be torn out.'
The dark figure nodded sympathetically.
'A priest heard you, did he?' he said.
'No. I told a priest. Such words should not go unpunished,' said the man
virtuously.
We're really good at it, Teppic thought. Mere animals couldn't possibly manage
to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid. 'I think we
ought to talk about this outside,' he said. 'Why not come with me?'
The man pulled back and glared at him.
'You want me to run away?' he said.
'Seems a good idea, wouldn't you say?'
The man stared into his eyes, his lips moving silently. Then he appeared to
reach a decision.
'Guards!' he screamed.
The shout echoed through the sleeping palace. His would-be rescuer stared at him
in disbelief.
'Mad,' Teppic said. 'You're all mad.'
He stepped out of the room, grabbed Ptraci's hand, and hurried along the shadowy
passages. Behind them the prisoner made the most of his tongue while he still
had it and used it to scream a stream of imprecations.
'Where are you taking me?' said Ptraci, as they marched smartly around a corner
and into a pillar-barred courtyard.
Teppic hesitated. He hadn't thought much beyond this point.
'Why do they bother to bolt the doors?' he demanded, eyeing the pillars. 'That's
what I want to know. I'm surprised you didn't wander back to your cell while I
was in there.'
'I - I don't want to die,' she said quietly.
'Don't blame you.'
'You mustn't say that! It's wrong not to want to die!' Teppic glanced up at the
roof around the courtyard and unslung his grapnel.
'I think I ought to go back to my cell,' said Ptraci, without actually making
any move in that direction. 'It's wrong even to think of disobeying the king.'
'Oh? What happens to you, then?'
'Something bad,' she said vaguely.
'You mean, worse than being thrown to the crocodiles or having your soul taken
by the Soul Eater?' said Teppic, and caught the grapnel firmly on some hidden
ledge on the flat roof.
'That's an interesting point,' said Ptraci, winning the Teppic Award for clear
thinking.
'Worth considering, isn't it?' Teppic tested his weight on the cord.
'What you're saying is, if the worst is going to happen to you anyway, you might
as well not bother any more,' said Ptraci. 'If the Soul Eater is going to get
you whatever you do, you might as well avoid the crocodiles, is that it?'
'You go up first,' said Teppic, 'I think someone's coming.'
'Who are you?'
Teppic fished in his pouch. He'd come back to Djeli an aeon ago with just the
clothes he stood up in, but they were the clothes he'd stood up in throughout
his exam. He balanced a Number Two throwing knife in his hand, the steel
glinting in the flarelight. It was possibly the only steel in the country; it
wasn't that Djelibeybi hadn't heard about iron, it was just that if copper was
good enough for your great-great-great-great-grandfather, it was good enough for
you.
No, the guards didn't deserve knives. They hadn't done anything wrong.
His hand closed over the little mesh bag of caltraps. These were a small model,
a mere one inch per spike. Caltraps didn't kill anyone, they just slowed them
down a bit. One or two of them in the sole of the foot induced extreme slowness
and caution in all except the terminally enthusiastic.
He scattered a few across the mouth of the passage and ran back to the rope,
hauling himself up in a few quick swings. He reached the roof just as the
leading guards ran under the lintel. He waited until he heard the first curse,
and then coiled up the rope and hurried after the girl.
'They'll catch us,' she said.
'I don't think so.'
'And then the king will have us thrown to the crocodiles.'
'Oh no, I don't think-' Teppic paused. It was an intriguing idea.
'He might,' he ventured. 'It's very hard to be sure about anything.'
'So what shall we do now?'
Teppic stared across the river, where the pyramids were ablaze. The Great
Pyramid was still under construction, by flarelight; a swarm of blocks, dwarfed
by distance, hovered near its tip. The amount of labour Ptaclusp was putting on
the job was amazing.
What a flare that will give, he thought. It'll be seen all the way to Ankh.
'Horrible things, aren't they,' said Ptraci, behind him.
'Do you think so?'
'They're creepy. The old king hated them, you know. He said they nailed the
Kingdom to the past.'
'Did he say why?'
'No. He just hated them. He was a nice old boy. Very kind. Not like this new
one.' She blew her nose and replaced her handkerchief in its scarcely adequate
space in her sequinned bra.
'Er, what exactly did you have to do? As a handmaiden, I mean?' said Teppic,
scanning the rooftop panorama to hide his embarrassment.
She giggled. 'You're not from around here, are you?'
'No. Not really.'
'Talk to him, mainly. Or just listen. He could really talk, but he always said
no-one ever really listened to what he said.'
'Yes,' said Teppic, with feeling. 'And that was all, was it?'
She stared at him, and then giggled again. 'Oh, that? No, he was very kind. I
wouldn't of minded, you understand, I had all the proper training. Bit of a
disappointment, really. The women of my family have served under the kings for
centuries, you know.'
'Oh yes?' he managed.
'I don't know whether you've ever seen a book, it's called The Shuttered-'
'-Palace,' said Teppic automatically.
'I thought a gentleman like you'd know about it,' said Ptraci, nudging him.
'It's a sort of textbook. Well, my great-great-grandmother posed for a lot of
the pictures. Not recently,' she added, in case he hadn't fully understood, 'I
mean, that would be a bit off-putting, she's been dead for twenty-five years.
When she was younger. I look a lot like her, everyone says.'
'Urk,' agreed Teppic.
'She was famous. She could put her feet behind her head, you know. So can I.
I've got my Grade Three.'
'Urk?'
'The old king told me once that the gods gave people a sense of humour to make
up for giving them sex. I think he was a bit upset at the time.'
'Urk.' Only the whites of Teppic's eyes were showing.
'You don't say much, do you?'
The breeze of the night was blowing her perfume towards him. Ptraci used scent
like a battering ram.
'We've got to find somewhere to hide you,' he said, concentrating on each word.
'Haven't you got any parents or anything?' He tried to ignore the fact that in
the shadowless flarelight she appeared to glow, and didn't have much success.
'Well, my mother still works in the palace somewhere,' said Ptraci. 'But I don't
think she'd be very sympathetic.'
'We've got to get you away from here,' said Teppic fervently. 'If you can hide
somewhere today, I can steal some horses or a boat or something. Then you could
go to Tsort or Ephebe or somewhere.'
'Foreign, you mean? I don't think I'd like that,' said Ptraci.
'Compared to the netherworld?'
'Well. Put like that, of course . . .' She took his arm. 'Why did you rescue
me?'
'Er? Because being alive is better than being dead, I think.'
'I've read up to number 46, Congress of the Five Auspicious Ants,' said Ptraci.
'If you've got some yoghurt, we could-'
'No! I mean, no. Not here. Not now. There must be people looking for us, it's
nearly dawn.'
'There's no need to yelp like that! I was just trying to be kind.'
'Yes. Good. Thank you.' Teppic broke away and peered desperately over a parapet
into one of the palace's numerous light wells.
'This leads to the embalmers' workshops,' he said. 'There must be plenty of
places to hide down here.' He unwound the cord again.
Various rooms led off the well. Teppic found one lined with benches and floored
with wood shavings; a doorway led through to another room stacked with mummy
cases, each one surmounted by the same golden dolly face he'd come to know and
loathe. He tapped on a few, and raised the lid of the nearest.
'No-one at home,' he said. 'You can have a nice rest in here. I can leave the
lid open a bit so you can get some air.'
'You can't think I'd risk that? Supposing you didn't come back!'
'I'll be back tonight,' said Teppic. 'And - and I'll see if I can drop some food
and water in some time today. She stood on tiptoe, her ankle bangles jingling
all the way down Teppic's libido. He glanced down involuntarily and saw that
every toenail was painted. He remembered Cheesewright telling them behind the
stables one lunch-hour that girls who painted their toenails were . . . well, he
couldn't quite remember now, but it had seemed pretty unbelievable at the time.
'It looks very hard,' she said.
'What?'
'If I've got to lie in it, it'll need some cushions.'
'I'll put some wood shavings in, look!' said Teppic. 'But hurry up! Please!'
'All right. But you will be back, won't you? Promise?'
'Yes, yes! I promise!'
He wedged a splinter of wood on the case to allow an airhole, heaved the lid
back on and ran for it.
The ghost of the king watched him go.

The sun rose. As the golden light spilled down the fertile valley of the Djel
the pyramid flares paled and became ghost dancers against the lightening sky.
They were now accompanied by a noise. It had been there all the time, far too
high-pitched for mortal ears, a sound now dropping down from the far ultrasonic
KKKkkkkkkhhheeee. . .
It screamed out of the sky, a thin rind of sound like a violin bow dragged
across the raw surface of the brain.
kkkkheeeeeee. . .
Or a wet fingernail dragged over an exposed nerve, some said. You could set your
watch by it, they would have said, if anyone knew what one was.
. . .keeee. . .
It went deeper and deeper as the sunlight washed over the stones, passing
through cat scream to dog growl.
. . .ee. . . ee. . . ee.
The flares collapsed.
. . .ops.

'A fine morning, sire. I trust you slept well?'
Teppic waved a hand at Dios, but said nothing. The barber was working through
the Ceremony of Going Forth Shaven.
The barber was trembling. Until recently he had been a one-handed, unemployed
stonemason. Then the terrible high priest had summoned him and ordered him to be
the king's barber, but it meant you had to touch the king but it was all right
because it was all sorted out by the priests and nothing more had to be chopped
off. On the whole, it was better than he had thought, and a great honour to be
singlehandedly responsible for the king's beard, such as it was.
'You were not disturbed in any way?' said the high priest. His eyes scanned the
room on a raster of suspicion; it was surprising that little lines of molten
rock didn't drip off the walls.
'Verrr-'
'If you would but hold still, O never-dying one,' said the barber, in the
pleading tone of voice employed by one who is assured of a guided tour of a
crocodile's alimentary tract if he nicks an ear.
'You heard no strange noises, sire?' said Dios. He stepped back suddenly so that
he could see behind the gilded peacock screen at the other end of the room.
'Norr.'
'Your majesty looks a little peaky this morning, sire,' said Dios. He sat down
on the bench with the carved cheetahs on either end. Sitting down in the
presence of the king, except on ceremonial occasions, was not something that was
allowed. It did, however, mean that he could squint under Teppic's low bed.
Dios was rattled. Despite the aches and the lack of sleep, Teppic felt oddly
elated. He wiped his chin.
'It's the bed,' he said. 'I think I have mentioned it. Mattresses, you know.
They have feathers in them. If the concept is unfamiliar, ask the pirates of
Khali. Half of them must be sleeping on goosefeather mattresses by now.'
'His majesty is pleased to joke,' said Dios.
Teppic knew he shouldn't push it any further, but he did so anyway.
'Something wrong, Dios?' he said.
'A miscreant broke into the palace last night. The girl Ptraci is missing.'
'That is very disturbing.'
'Yes, sire.'
'Probably a suitor or a swain or something.'
Dios's face was like stone. 'Possibly, sire.
'The sacred crocodiles will be going hungry, then.' But not for long, Teppic
thought. Walk to the end of any of the little jetties down by the bank, let your
shadow fall on the river, and the mud-yellow water would become, by magic,
mud-yellow bodies. They looked like large, sodden logs, the main difference
being that logs don't open at one end and bite your legs off. The sacred
crocodiles of the Djel were the kingdom's garbage disposal, river patrol and
occasional morgue.

They couldn't simply be called big. If one of the huge bulls ever drifted
sideways on to the current, he'd dam the river.
The barber tiptoed out. A couple of body servants tiptoed in.
'I anticipated your majesty's natural reaction, sire,' Dios continued, like the
drip of water in deep limestone caverns.
'Jolly good,' said Teppic, inspecting the clothes for the day. 'What was it,
exactly?'
'A detailed search of the palace, room by room.'
'Absolutely. Carry on, Dios.'
My face is perfectly open, he told himself. I haven't twitched a muscle out of
place. I know I haven't. He can read me like a stele. I can outstare him.
'Thank you, sire.'
'I imagine they'll be miles away by now,' said Teppic. 'Whoever they were. She
was only a handmaiden, wasn't she?'
'It is unthinkable that anyone could disobey your judgements! There is no-one in
the kingdom that would dare to! Their souls would be forfeit! They will be
hunted down, sire! Hunted down and destroyed!'
The servants cowered behind Teppic. This wasn't mere anger. This was wrath.
Real, old-time, vintage wrath. And waxing? It waxed like a hatful of moons.
'Are you feeling all right, Dios?'
Dios had turned to look out across the river. The Great Pyramid was almost
complete. The sight of it seemed to calm him down or, at least, stabilise him on
some new mental plateau.
'Yes, sire,' he said. 'Thank you.' He breathed deeply. 'Tomorrow, sire, you are
pleased to witness the capping of the pyramid. A momentous occasion. Of course,
it will be some time before the interior chambers are completed.'
'Fine. Fine. And this morning, I think, I should like to visit my father.'
'I am sure the late king will be pleased to see you, sire. It is your wish that
I should accompany you.'
'Oh.'

It's a fact as immutable as the Third Law of Sod that there is no such thing as
a good Grand Vizier. A predilection to cackle and plot is apparently part of the
job spec.
High priests tend to get put in the same category. They have to face the implied
assumption that no sooner do they get the funny hat than they're issuing strange
orders, e.g., princesses tied to rocks for itinerant sea monsters and throwing
little babies in the sea.
This is a gross slander. Throughout the history of the Disc most high priests
have been serious, pious and conscientious men who have done their best to
interpret the wishes of the gods, sometimes disembowelling or flaying alive
hundreds of people in a day in order to make sure they're getting it absolutely
right.

King Teppicymon XXVII's casket lay in state. Crafted it was of foryphy,
smaradgine, skelsa and delphinet, inlaid it was with pink jade and shode,
perfumed and fumed it was with many rare resins and perfumes
It looked very impressive but, the king considered, it wasn't worth dying for.
He gave up and wandered across the courtyard.
A new player had entered the drama of his death.
Grinjer, the maker of models.
He'd always wondered about the models. Even a humble farmer expected to be
buried with a selection of crafted livestock, which would somehow become real in
the netherworld. Many a man made do with one cow like a toast rack in this world
in order to afford a pedigree herd in the next Nobles and kings got the complete
set, including model carts, houses, boats and anything else too big or
inconvenient to fit in the tomb. Once on the other side, they'd somehow become
the genuine article.
The king frowned. When he was alive he'd known that it was true. Not doubted it
for a moment
Grinjer stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth as, with great care, he
tweezered a tiny oar to a perfect 1/80th scale river trireme. Every flat surface
in his corner of the workshop was stacked with midget animals and artifacts;
some of his more impressive ones hung from wires on the ceiling.
The king had already ascertained from overheard conversation that Grinjer was
twenty-six, couldn't find anything to stop the inexorable advance of his acne,
and lived at home with his mother. Where, in the evenings, he made models. Deep
in the duffel coat of his mind he hoped one day to find a nice girl who would
understand the absolute importance of getting every detail right on a ceremonial
six-wheeled ox cart, and who would hold his glue-pot, and always be ready with a
willing thumb whenever anything needed firm pressure until the paste dried.
He was aware of trumpets and general excitement behind him. He ignored it. There
always seemed to be a lot of fuss these days. In his experience it was always
about trivial things. People just didn't have their priorities right. He'd been
waiting two months for a few ounces of gum varneti, and it didn't seem to bother
anyone. He screwed his eyeglass into a more comfortable position and slotted a
minute steering oar into place.
Someone was standing next to him. Well, they could make themselves useful .
'Could you just put your finger here,' he said, without glancing around. 'Just
for a minute, until the glue sets.'
There seemed to be a sudden drop in temperature. He looked up into a smiling
golden mask. Over its shoulder Dios's face was shading, in Grinjer's expert
opinion, from No.13 (Pale Flesh) to No.37 (Sunset Purple, Gloss).
'Oh,' he said.
'It's very good,' said Teppic. 'What is it?'
Grinjer blinked at him. Then he blinked at the boat.
'It's an eighty-foot Khali-fashion river trireme with fishtail spear deck and
ramming prow,' he said automatically.
He got the impression that more was expected of him. He cast around for
something suitable.
'It's got more than five hundred bits,' he added. 'Every plank on the deck is
individually cut, look.'
'Fascinating,' said Teppic. 'Well, I won't hold you up. Carry on the good work.'

'The sail really unfurls,' said Grinjer. 'See, if you pull this thread, the-'
The mask had moved. Dios was there instead. He gave Grinjer a short glare which
indicated that more would be heard about this later on, and hurried after the
king. So did the ghost of Teppicymon XXVII.
Teppic's eyes swivelled behind the mask. There was the open doorway into the
room of caskets. He could just make out the one containing Ptraci; the wedge of
wood was still under the lid.
'Our father, however, is over here. Sire,' said Dios. He could move as silently
as a ghost.
'Oh. Yes.' Teppic hesitated and then crossed to the big case on its trestles. He
stared down at it for some time. The gilded face on the lid looked like every
other mask.
'A very good likeness, sire,' prompted Dios.
'Ye-ess,' said Teppic. 'I suppose so. He definitely looks happier. I suppose.'
'Hallo, my boy,' said the king. He knew that no-one could hear him, but he felt
happier talking to them all the same. It was better than talking to himself. He
was going to have more than enough time for that.
'I think it brings out the best in him, O commander of the heavens,' said the
head sculptor.
'Makes me look like a constipated wax dolly.'
Teppic cocked his head on one side.
'Yes,' he said, uncertainly. 'Yes. Er. Well done.'
He half-turned to look through the doorway again.
Dios nodded to the guards on either side of the passageway.
'If you will excuse me, sire,' he said urbanely.
'Hmm?'
'The guards will continue their search.'
'Right. Oh-'
Dios bore down on Ptraci's casket, flanked by guards. He gripped the lid, thrust
it backwards, and said, 'Behold! What do we find?'
Dil and Gern joined him. They looked inside.
'Wood shavings,' said Dil.
Gern sniffed. 'They smell nice, though,' he said.
Dios's fingers drummed on the lid. Teppic had never seen him at a loss before.
The man actually started tapping the sides of the case, apparently seeking any
hidden panels.
He closed the lid carefully and looked blankly at Teppic, who for the first time
was very glad that the mask didn't reveal his expression.
'She's not in there,' said the old king. 'She got out for a call of nature when
the men went to have their breakfast.'
She must have climbed out, Teppic told himself. So where is she now?
Dios scanned the room carefully and then, after swinging slowly backwards and
forwards like a compass needle, his eyes fixed on the king's mummy case. It was
big. It was roomy. There was a certain inevitability about it.
He crossed the room in a couple of strides and heaved it open.
'Don't bother to knock,' the king grumbled. 'It's not as if I'm going anywhere.'

Teppic risked a look. The mummy of the king was quite alone.
'Are you sure you're feeling all right, Dios?' he said.
'Yes, sire. We cannot be too careful, sire. Clearly they are not here, sire.'
'You look as if you could do with a breath of fresh air,' said Teppic,
upbraiding himself for doing this but doing it, nevertheless. Dios at a loss was
an awe-inspiring sight, and slightly disconcerting; it made one instinctively
fear for the stability of things.
'Yes, sire. Thank you, sire.'
'Have a sit down and someone will bring you a glass of water. And then we will
go and inspect the pyramid.'
Dios sat down.
There was a terrible little splintering noise.
'He's sat on the boat,' said the king. 'First humorous thing I've ever seen him
do.'

The pyramid gave a new meaning to the word 'massive'. It bent the landscape
around it. It seemed to Teppic that its very weight was deforming the shape of
things, stretching the kingdom like a lead ball on a rubber sheet.
He knew that was a ridiculous idea. Big though the pyramid was, it was tiny
compared to, say, a mountain.
But big, very big, compared to anything else. Anyway, mountains were meant to be
big, the fabric of the universe was used to the idea. The pyramid was a made
thing, and much bigger than a made thing ought to be.
It was also very cold. The black marble of its sides was shining white with
frost in the roasting afternoon sun. He was foolish enough to touch it and left
a layer of skin on the surface.
'It's freezing!'
'It's storing already, O breath of the river,' said Ptaclusp, who was sweating.
'It's the wossname, the boundary effect.'
'I note that you have ceased work on the burial chambers,' said Dios.
'The men . . . the temperature . . . boundary effects a bit too much to risk . .
.' muttered Ptaclusp. 'Er.'
Teppic looked from one to the other.
'What's the matter?' he said. 'Are there problems?'
'Er,' said Ptaclusp.
'You're way ahead of schedule. Marvellous work,' said Teppic. 'You've put a
tremendous amount of labour on the job.'
'Er. Yes. Only.'
There was silence except for the distant sounds of men at work, and the faint
noise of the air sizzling where it touched the pyramid.
'It's bound to be all right when we get the capstone on, the pyramid builder
managed eventually. 'Once it's flaring properly, no problem. Er.'
He indicated the electrum capstone. It was surprisingly small, only a foot or so
across, and rested on a couple of trestles.
'We should be able to put it on tomorrow,' said Ptaclusp. 'Would your sire still
be honouring us with the capping-out ceremony?' In his nervousness he gripped
the hem of his robe and began to twist it. 'There's drinks,' he stuttered. 'And
a silver trowel that you can take away with you. Everyone shouts hurrah and
throws their hats in the air.
'Certainly,' said Dios. 'It will be an honour.'
'And for us too, your sire,' said Ptaclusp loyally.
'I meant for you,' said the high priest. He turned to the wide courtyard between
the base of the pyramid and the river, which was lined with statues and stelae
commemorating King Teppicymon's mighty deeds[20], and pointed.
'And you can get rid of that,' he added.
Ptaclusp gave him a look of unhappy innocence.
'That statue,' said Dios, 'is what I am referring to.,
'Oh. Ah. Well, we thought once you saw it in place, you see, in the right light,
and what with Hat the Vulture-Headed God being very-'
'It goes,' said Dios.
'Right you are, your reverence,' said Ptaclusp miserably. It was, right now, the
least of his problems, but on top of everything else he was beginning to think
that the statue was following him around.
Dios leaned closer.
'You haven't seen a young woman anywhere on the site, have you?' he demanded.
'No women on the site, my lord,' said Ptaclusp. 'Very bad luck.'
'This one was provocatively dressed,' the high priest said.
'No, no women.'
'The palace is not far, you see. There must be many places to hide over here,'
Dios continued, insistently.
Ptaclusp swallowed. He knew that, all right. Whatever had possessed him.
'I assure you, your reverence,' he said.
Dios gave him a scowl, and then turned to where Teppic, as it turned out, had
been.
'Please ask him not to shake hands with anybody,' said the builder, as Dios
hurried after the distant glint of sunlight on gold. The king still didn't seem
to be able to get alongside the idea that the last thing the people wanted was a
man of the people. Those workers who couldn't get out of the way in time were
thrusting their hands behind their back.
Alone now, Ptaclusp fanned himself and staggered into the shade of his tent.
Where, waiting to see him, were Ptaclusp IIa, Ptaclusp IIa, Ptaclusp IIa and
Ptaclusp IIa. Ptaclusp always felt uneasy in the presence of accountants, and
four of them together was very bad, especially when they were all the same
person. Three Ptaclusp IIbs were there as well; the other two, unless it was
three by now, were out on the site.
He waved his hands in a conciliatory way.
'All right, all right,' he said. 'What are today's problems?'
One of the IIas pulled a stack of wax tablets towards him
'Have you any idea, father,' he began, employing that thin; razor-edged voice
that accountants use to preface something unexpected and very expensive, 'what
calculus is?'
'You tell me,' said Ptaclusp, sagging on to a stool.
'It's what I've had to invent to deal with the wages bill, father,' said another
IIa.
'I thought that was algebra?' said Ptaclusp.
'We passed algebra last week,' said a third IIa. 'It's calculus now. I've had to
loop myself another four times to work on it, and there's three of me working
on-' he glanced at his brothers - 'quantum accountancy.'
'What's that for?' said his father wearily.
'Next week.' The leading accountant glared at the top slab. 'For example,' he
said. 'You know Rthur the fresco painter?'
'What about him?'
'He - that is, they - have put in a bill for two years' work.'
'Oh.'
'They said they did it on Tuesday. On account of how time is fractal in nature,
they said.'
'They said that?' said Ptaclusp.
'It's amazing what they pick up,' said one of the accountants, glaring at the
paracosmic architects.
Ptaclusp hesitated. 'How many of them are there?'
'How should we know? We know there were fifty-three. Then he went critical.
We've certainly seen him around a lot.' Two of the IIas sat back and steepled
their fingers, always a bad sign in anyone having anything to do with money.
'The problem is,' one of them continued, 'that after the initial enthusiasm a
lot of the workers looped themselves unofficially so that they could stay at
home and send themselves out to work.'
'But that's ridiculous,' Ptaclusp protested weakly. 'They're not different
people, they're just doing it to themselves.'
'That's never stopped anyone, father,' said IIa. 'How many men have stopped
drinking themselves stupid at the age of twenty to save a stranger dying of
liver failure at forty?'
There was silence while they tried to work this one out.
'A stranger-?' said Ptaclusp uncertainly.
'I mean himself, when older,' snapped IIa. 'That was philosophy,' he added.
'One of the masons beat himself up yesterday,' said one of the IIbs gloomily.
'He was fighting with himself over his wife. Now he's going mad because he
doesn't know whether it's an earlier version of him or someone he hasn't been
yet. He's afraid he's going to creep up on him. There's worse than that, too.
Dad, we're paying forty thousand people, and we're only employing two thousand.'

'It's going to bankrupt us, that's what you're going to say,' said Ptaclusp. 'I
know. It's all my fault. I just wanted something to hand on to you, you know. I
didn't expect all this. It seemed too easy to start with.'
One of the IIas cleared his throat.
'It's . . . uh . . . not quite as bad as all that,' he said quietly.
'What do you mean?'
The accountant laid a dozen copper coins on the table.
'Well, er,' he said. 'You see, eh, it occurred to me, since there's all this
movement in time, that it's not just people who can be looped, and, er, look,
you see these coins?'
One coin vanished.
'They're all the same coin, aren't they,' said one of his brothers.
'Well, yes,' said the IIa, very embarrassed, because interfering with the divine
flow of money was alien to his personal religion. 'The same coin at five minute
intervals.'
'And you're using this trick to pay the men?' said Ptaclusp dully.
'It's not a trick! I give them the money,' said IIa primly. 'What happens to it
afterwards isn't my responsibility, is it?'
'I don't like any of this,' said his father.
'Don't worry. It all evens out in the end,' said one of the IIas. 'Everyone gets
what's coming to them.'
'Yes. That's what I'm afraid of,' said Ptaclusp.
'It's just a way of letting your money work for you,' said another son. 'It's
probably quantum.'
'Oh, good,' said Ptaclusp weakly.
'We'll get the block on tonight, don't worry,' said one of the IIbs. 'After it's
flared the power off we can all settle down.'
'I told the king we'd do it tomorrow.' The Ptaclusp IIbs went pale in unison.
Despite the heat, it suddenly seemed a lot colder in the tent.
'Tonight, father,' said one of them. 'Surely you mean tonight?
'Tomorrow,' said Ptaclusp, firmly. 'I've arranged an awning and people throwing
lotus blossom. There's going to be a band. Tocsins and trumpets and tinkling
cymbals. And speeches and a meat tea afterwards. That's the way we've always
done it. Attracts new customers. They like to have a look round.'
'Father, you've seen the way it soaks up. . . you've seen the frost . .
'Let it soak. We Ptaclusps don't go around capping off pyramids as though we
were finishing off a garden wall. We don't knock off like a wossname in the
night. People expect a ceremony.
'But-'
'I'm not listening. I've listened to too much of this new-fangled stuff.
Tomorrow. I've had the bronze plaque made, and the velvet curtains and
everything.'
One of the IIas shrugged. 'It's no good arguing with him,' he said. 'I'm from
three hours ahead. I remember this meeting. We couldn't change his mind.'
'I'm from two hours ahead,' said one of his clones. 'I remember you saying that,
too.'
Beyond the walls of the tent, the pyramid sizzled with accumulated time.

There is nothing mystical about the power of pyramids.
Pyramids are dams in the stream of time. Correctly shaped and orientated, with
the proper paracosmic measurements correctly plumbed in, the temporal potential
of the great mass of stone can be diverted to accelerate or reverse time over a
very small area, in the same way that a hydraulic ram can be induced to pump
water against the flow.
The original builders, who were of course ancients and therefore wise, knew this
very well and the whole point of a correctly-built pyramid was to achieve
absolute null time in the central chamber so that a dying king, tucked up there,
would indeed live forever - or at least, never actually die. The time that
should have passed in the chamber was stored in the bulk of the pyramid and
allowed to flare off once every twenty-four hours.

After a few aeons people forgot this and thought you could achieve the same
effect by a) ritual b) pickling people and c) storing their soft inner bits in
jars.
This seldom works.
And so the art of pyramid tuning was lost, and all the knowledge became a
handful of misunderstood rules and hazy recollections. The ancients were far too
wise to build very big pyramids. They could cause very strange things, things
that would make mere fluctuations in time look tiny by comparison.
By the way, contrary to popular opinion pyramids don't sharpen razor blades.
They just take them back to when they weren't blunt. It's probably because of
quantum.

Teppic lay on the strata of his bed, listening intently.
There were two guards outside the door, and another two on the balcony outside,
and - he was impressed at Dios's forethought - one on the roof. He could hear
them trying to make no noise.
He'd hardly been able to protest. If black-clad miscreants were getting into the
palace, then the person of the king had to be protected. It was undeniable.
He slipped off the solid mattress and glided through the twilight to the statue
of Bast the Cat-Headed God in the corner, twisted off the head, and pulled out
his assassin's costume. He dressed quickly, cursing the lack of mirrors, and
then padded across and lurked behind a pillar.
The only problem, as far as he could see, was not laughing. Being a soldier in
Djelibeybi was not a high risk job. There was never a hint of internal rebellion
and, since either neighbour could crush the kingdom instantly by force of arms,
there was no real point in selecting keen and belligerent warriors. In fact, the
last thing the priesthood wanted was enthusiastic soldiers. Enthusiastic
soldiers with no fighting to do soon get bored and start thinking dangerous
thoughts, like how much better they could run the country.
Instead the job attracted big, solid men, the kind of men who could stand stock
still for hours at a time without getting bored, men with the build of an ox and
the mental processes to match. Excellent bladder control was also desirable.
He stepped out on to the balcony.
Teppic had learned how not to move stealthily. Millions of years of being eaten
by creatures that know how to move stealthily has made humanity very good at
spotting stealthy movement. Nor was it enough to make no noise, because little
moving patches of silence always aroused suspicion. The trick was to glide
through the night with a quiet reassurance, just like the air did.
There was a guard standing just outside the room. Teppic drifted past him and
climbed carefully up the wall. It had been decorated with a complex bas relief
of the triumphs of past monarchs, so Teppic used his family to give him a leg
up.
The breeze was blowing off the desert as he swung his legs over the parapet and
walked silently across the roof, which was still hot underfoot. The air had a
recently-cooked smell, tinted with spice.
It was a strange feeling, to be creeping across the roof of your own palace,
trying to avoid your own guards, engaged on a mission in direct contravention of
your own decree and knowing that if you were caught you would have yourself
thrown to the sacred crocodiles. After all, he'd apparently already instructed
that he was to be shown no mercy if he was captured.
Somehow it added an extra thrill.
There was freedom of a sort up here on the rooftops, the only kind of freedom
available to a king of the valley. It occurred to Teppic that the landless
peasants down on the delta had more freedom than he did, although the seditious
and non-kingly side of him said, yes, freedom to catch any diseases of their
choice, starve as much as they wanted, and die of whatever dreadful ague took
their fancy. But freedom, of a sort.
A faint noise in the huge silence of the night drew him to the riverward edge of
the roof. The Djel sprawled in the moonlight, broad and oily.
There was a boat in midstream, heading back from the far bank and the
necropolis. There was no mistaking the figure at the oars. The flarelight
gleamed off his bald head.
One day, Teppic thought, I'll follow him. I'll find out what it is he does over
there.
If he goes over in daylight, of course.
In daylight the necropolis was merely gloomy, as though the whole universe had
shut down for early-closing. He'd even explored it, wandering through streets
and alleys that contrived to be still and dusty no matter what the weather was
on the other, the living side of the water. There was always a breathless feel
about it, which was probably not to be wondered at. Assassins liked the night on
general principles, but the night of the necropolis was something else. Or
rather, it was the same thing, but a lot more of it. Besides, it was the only
city anywhere on the Disc where an assassin couldn't find employment.
He reached the light well that opened on the embalmers' courtyard and peered
down. A moment later he landed lightly on the floor and slipped into the room of
cases.
'Hallo, lad.'
Teppic opened the lid of the case. It was still empty.
'She's in one of the ones at the back,' said the king. 'Never had much of a
sense of direction.'
It was a great big palace. Teppic could barely find his way around it by
daylight. He considered his chances of carrying out a search in pitch darkness.
'It's a family trait, you know. Your grandad had to have Left and Right painted
on his sandals, it was that bad. It's lucky for you that you take after your
mother in that respect.'
It was strange. She didn't talk, she chattered. She didn't seem to be able to
hold a simple thought in her head for more than about ten seconds. Her brain
appeared to be wired directly to her mouth, so that as soon as a thought entered
her head she spoke it out loud. Compared to the ladies he had met at soirees in
Ankh, who delighted in entertaining young assassins and fed them expensive
delicacies and talked to them of high and delicate matters while their eyes
sparkled like carborundum drills and their lips began to glisten compared to
them, she was as empty as a, as a, well, as an empty thing. Nevertheless, he
found he desperately wanted to find her. The sheer undemandingness of her was
like a drug. The memory of her bosom was quite beside the point.
'I'm glad you've come back for her,' said the king vaguely.
'She's your sister, you know. Half sister, that is. Sometimes I wish I'd married
her mother, but you see she wasn't royal. Very bright woman, her mother.'
Teppic listened hard. There it was again: a faint breathing noise, only heard at
all because of the deep silence of the night. He worked his way to the back of
the room, listened again, and lifted the lid of a case.
Ptraci was curled up on the bottom, fast asleep with her head on her arm.
He leaned the lid carefully against the wall and touched her hair. She muttered
something in her sleep, and settled into a more comfortable position.
'Er, I think you'd better wake up,' he whispered.
She changed position again and muttered something like: 'Wstflgl.'
Teppic hesitated. Neither his tutors nor Dios had prepared him for this. He knew
at least seventy different ways of killing a sleeping person, but none to wake
them up first.
He prodded her in what looked like the least embarrassing area of her skin. She
opened her eyes.
'Oh,' she said. 'It's you.' And she yawned.
'I've come to take you away,' said Teppic. 'You've been asleep all day.'
'I heard someone talking,' she said, stretching in a fashion that made Teppic
look away hurriedly. 'It was that priest, the one with the face like a bald
eagle. He's really horrible.'
'He is, isn't he?' agreed Teppic, intensely relieved to hear it said.
'So I just kept quiet. And there was the king. The new king.'
'Oh. He was down here, was he?' said Teppic weakly. The bitterness in her voice
was like a Number Four stabbing knife in his heart.
'All the girls say he's really weird,' she added, as he helped her out of the
case. 'You can touch me, you know. I'm not made of china.'
He steadied her arm, feeling in sore need of a cold bath and a quick run around
the rooftops.
'You're an assassin, aren't you,' she went on. 'I remembered that after you'd
gone. An assassin from foreign parts. All that black. Have you come to kill the
king?'
'I wish I could,' said Teppic. 'He's really beginning to get on my nerves. Look,
could you take your bangles off?'
'Why?'
'They make such a noise when you walk.' Even Ptraci's earrings appeared to chime
the hours when she moved her head.
'I don't want to,' she said. 'I'd feel naked without them.'
'You're nearly naked with them,' hissed Teppic. 'Please!'
'She can play the dulcimer,' said the ghost of Teppicymon XXVII, apropos of
nothing much. 'Not very well, mind you. She's up to page five of "Little Pieces
for Tiny Fingers".'
Teppic crept to the passage leading out of the embalming room and listened hard.
Silence ruled in the palace, broken only by heavy breathing and the occasional
clink behind him as Ptraci stripped herself of her jewellery. He crept back.
'Please hurry up,' he said, 'we haven't got a lot of-'
Ptraci was crying.
'Er,' said Teppic. 'Er.'
'Some of these were presents from my granny,' sniffed Ptraci. 'The old king gave
me some, too. These earrings have been in my family for ever such a long time.
How would you like it if you had to do it?'
'You see, jewellery isn't just something she wears,' said the ghost of
Teppicymon XXVII. 'It's part of who she is.' My word, he added to himself,
that's probably an Insight. Why is it so much easier to think when you're dead?
'I don't wear any,' said Teppic.
'You've got all those daggers and things.'
'Well, I need them to do my job.'
'Well then.'
'Look, you don't have to leave them here, you can put them in my pouch,' he
said. 'But we must be going. Please!'
'Goodbye,' said the ghost sadly, watching them sneak out to the courtyard. He
floated back to his corpse, who wasn't the best of company.

The breeze was stronger when they reached the roof. It was hotter, too, and dry.

Across the river one or two of the older pyramids were already sending up their
flares, but they were weak and looked wrong.
'I feel itchy,' said Ptraci. 'What's wrong?'
'It feels like we're in for a thunderstorm,' said Teppic, staring across the
river at the Great Pyramid. Its blackness had intensified, so that it was a
triangle of deeper darkness in the night. Figures were running around its base
like lunatics watching their asylum burn.
'What's a thunderstorm?'
'Very hard to describe,' he said, in a preoccupied voice. 'Can you see what
they're doing over there?'
Ptraci squinted across the river.
'They're very busy,' she said.
'Looks more like panic to me.'
A few more pyramids flared, but instead of roaring straight up the flames
flickered and lashed backwards and forwards, driven by intangible winds.
Teppic shook himself. 'Come on,' he said. 'Let's get you away from here.'

'I said we should have capped it this evening,' shouted Ptaclusp IIb above the
screaming of the pyramid. 'I can't float it up now, the turbulence up there must
be terrific!'
The ice of day was boiling off the black marble, which was already warm to the
touch. He stared distractedly at the capstone on its cradle and then at his
brother, who was still in his nightshirt.
'Where's father?' he said.
'I sent one of us to go and wake him up,' said IIa.
'Who?'
'One of you, actually.'
'Oh.' IIb stared again at the capstone. 'It's not that heavy,' he said. 'Two of
us could manhandle it up there.' He gave his brother an enquiring look.
'You must be mad. Send some of the men to do it.'
'They've all run away-'
Down river another pyramid tried to flare, spluttered, and then ejected a
screaming, ragged flame that arched across the sky and grounded near the top of
the Great Pyramid itself.
'It's interfering with the others now!' shouted IIb. 'Come on. We've got to
flare it off, it's the only way!'
About a third of the way up the pyramid's flanks a crackling blue zigzag arced
out and struck itself on a stone sphinx. The air above it boiled.
The two brothers slung the stone between them and staggered to the scaffolding,
while the dust around them whirled into strange shapes.
'Can you hear something?' said IIb, as they stumbled on to the first platform.
'What, you mean the fabric of time and space being put through the wringer?'
said IIa.
The architect gave his brother a look of faint admiration. It was an unusual
remark for an accountant. Then his face returned to its previous look of faint
terror.
'No, not that,' he said.
'Well, the sound of the very air itself being subjected to horrible tortures?'
'Not that, either,' said IIb, vaguely annoyed. 'I mean the creaking noise.'
Three more pyramids struck their discharges, which fizzled through the roiling
clouds overhead and poured into the black marble above them.

'Can't hear anything like that,' said IIa.
'I think it's coming from the pyramid.'
'Well, you can put your ear against it if you like, but I'm not going to.'
The scaffolding swayed in the storm as they eased their way up another ladder,
the heavy capstone rocking between them.
'I said we shouldn't do it,' muttered the accountant, as the stone slid gently
on to his toes. 'We shouldn't have built this.'
'Just shut up and lift your end, will you?'
And so, one rocking ladder after another, the brothers Ptaclusp eased their
bickering way up the flanks of the Great Pyramid, while the lesser tombs along
the Djel fired one after another, and the sky streamed with lines of sizzling
time.
It was around about this point that the greatest mathematician in the world,
lying in cosy flatulence in his stall below the palace, stopped chewing the cud
and realised that something very wrong was happening to numbers. All the
numbers.

The camel looked along its nose at Teppic. Its expression made it clear that of
all the riders in all the world it would least like to ride it, he was right at
the top of the list. However, camels look like that at everyone. Camels have a
very democratic approach to the human race. They hate every member of it,
without making any distinctions for rank or creed.
This one appeared to be chewing soap.
Teppic looked distractedly down the shadowy length of the royal stables, which
had once contained a hundred camels. He'd have given the world for a horse, and
a moderately-sized continent for a pony. But the stables now held only a handful
of rotting war chariots, relics of past glories, an elderly elephant whose
presence was a bit of a mystery, and this camel. It looked an extremely
inefficient animal. It was going threadbare at the knees.
'Well, this is it,' he said to Ptraci. 'I don't dare try the river during the
night. I could try and get you over the border.'
'Is that saddle on right?' said Ptraci. 'It looks awfully funny.'
'It's on an awfully odd creature,' said Teppic. 'How do we climb on to it?'
'I've seen the camel drivers at work,' she replied. 'I think they just hit them
very hard with a big stick.'
The camel knelt down and gave her a smug look.
Teppic shrugged, pulled open the doors to the outside world, and stared into the
faces of five guards.
He backed away. They advanced. Three of them were holding the heavy Djel bows,
which could propel an arrow through a door or turn a charging hippo into three
tons of mobile kebab. The guards had never had to fire them at a fellow human,
but looked as though they were prepared to entertain the idea.
The guard captain tapped one of the men on the shoulder, and said, 'Go and
inform the high priest.'
He glared at Teppic.
'Throw down all your weapons,' he said.
'What, all of them?'
'Yes. All of them.'
'It might take some time,' said Teppic cautiously.
'And keep your hands where I can see them,' the captain added.
'We could be up against a real impasse here,' Teppic ventured. He looked from
one guard to another. He knew a variety of methods of unarmed combat, but they
all rather relied on the opponent not being about to fire an arrow straight
through you as soon as you moved. But he could probably dive sideways, and once
he had the cover of the camel stalls he could bide his time
And that would leave Ptraci exposed. Besides, he could hardly go around fighting
his own guards. That wasn't acceptable behaviour, even for a king.
There was a movement behind the guards and Dios drifted into view, as silent and
inevitable as an eclipse of the moon. He was holding a lighted torch, which
reflected wild highlights on his bald head.
'Ah,' he said. 'The miscreants are captured. Well done.' He nodded to the
captain. 'Throw them to the crocodiles.'
'Dios?' said Teppic, as two of the guards lowered their bows and bore down on
him.
'Did you speak?'
'You know who I am, man. Don't be silly.'
The high priest raised the torch.
'You have the advantage of me, boy,' he said. 'Metaphorically speaking.'
'This is not funny,' said Teppic. 'I order you to tell them who I am.'
'As you wish. This assassin,' said Dios, and the voice had the cut and sear of a
thermic lance, 'has killed the king.'
'I am the king, damn it,' said Teppic. 'How could I kill myself?'
'We are not stupid,' said Dios. 'These men know the king does not skulk the
palace at night, or consort with condemned criminals. All that remains for us to
find out is how you disposed of the body.'
His eyes fixed on Teppic's face, and Teppic realised that the high priest was,
indeed, truly mad. It was the rare kind of madness caused by being yourself for
so long that habits of sanity have etched themselves into the brain. I wonder
how old he really is? he thought.
'These assassins are cunning creatures,' said Dios. 'Have a care of him.'
There was a crash beside the priest. Ptraci had tried to throw a camel prod, and
missed.
When everyone looked back Teppic had vanished. The guards beside him were busy
collapsing slowly to the floor, groaning.
Dios smiled.
'Take the woman,' he snapped, and the captain darted forward and grabbed Ptraci,
who hadn't made any attempt to run away. Dios bent down and picked up the prod.
'There are more guards outside,' he said. 'I'm sure you will realise that. It
will be in your interests to step forward.'
'Why?' said Teppic, from the shadows. He fumbled in his boot for his blowpipe.
'You will then be thrown to the sacred crocodiles, by order of the king,' said
Dios.
'Something to look forward to, eh?' said Teppic, feverishly screwing bits
together.
'It would certainly be preferable to many alternatives,' said Dios.
In the darkness Teppic ran his fingers over the little coded knobs on the darts.
Most of the really spectacular poisons would have evaporated or dissolved into
harmlessness by now, but there were a number of lesser potions designed to give
their clients nothing more than a good night's sleep. An assassin might have to
work his way to an inhume past a number of alert bodyguards. It was considered
impolite to inhume them as well.
'You could let us go,' said Teppic. 'I suspect that's what you want, isn't it?
For me to go away and never come back? That suits me fine.'
Dios hesitated.
'You're supposed to say "And let the girl go",' he said.
'Oh, yes. And that, too,' said Teppic.
'No. I would be failing in my duty to the king,' said Dios.
'For goodness sake, Dios, you know I am the king!'
'No. I have a very clear picture of the king. You are not the king,' said the
priest.
Teppic peered over the edge of the camel stall. The camel peered over his
shoulder.
And then the world went mad.
All right, madder.

All the pyramids were blazing now, filling the sky with their sooty light as the
brothers Ptaclusp struggled to the main working platform.
IIa collapsed on the planking, wheezing like an elderly bellows. A few feet away
the sloping side was hot to the touch, and there was no doubt in his mind now
that the pyramid was creaking, like a sailing ship in a gale. He had never paid
much attention to the actual mechanics as opposed to the cost of pyramid
construction, but he was pretty certain that the noise was as wrong as II and II
making V.
His brother reached out to touch the stone, but drew his hand back as small
sparks flashed around his fingers.
'You can feel the warmth,' he said. 'It's astonishing!'
'Why?'
'Heating up a mass like this. I mean, the sheer tonnage...'
'I don't like it, Two-bee,' IIa quavered. 'Let's just leave the stone here,
shall we? I'm sure it'll be all right, and in the morning we can send a gang up
here, they'll know exactly what-'
His words were drowned out as another flare crackled across the sky and hit the
column of dancing air fifty feet above them. He grabbed part of the scaffolding.

'Sod take this,' he said. 'I'm off.'
'Hang on a minute,' said IIb. 'I mean, what is creaking? Stone can't creak.'
'The whole bloody scaffolding is moving, don't be daft!' He stared goggle-eyed
at his brother. 'Tell me it's the scaffolding,' he pleaded.
'No, I'm certain this time. It's coming from inside.' They stared at one
another, and then at the rickety ladder leading up to the tip, or to where the
tip should be.
'Come on!' said IIb. 'It can't flare off, it's trying to find ways of
discharging-'
There was a sound as loud as the groaning of continents.

Teppic felt it. He felt that his skin was several sizes too small. He felt that
someone was holding his ears and trying to twist his head off.
He saw the guard captain sag to his knees, fighting to get his helmet off, and
he leapt the stall.
Tried to leap the stall. Everything was wrong, and he landed heavily on a floor
that seemed undecided about becoming a wall. He managed to get to his feet and
was pulled sideways, dancing awkwardly across the stable to keep his balance.
The stables stretched and shrank like a picture in a distorting mirror. He'd
gone to see some once in Ankh, the three of them hazarding a half-coin each to
visit the transient marvels of Dr Mooner's Travelling Take Your Breath Away
Emporium. But you knew then that it was only twisted glass that was giving you a
head like a sausage and legs like footballs. Teppic wished he could be so
certain that what was happening around him would allow of such a harmless
explanation. You'd probably need a wobbly glass mirror to make it look normal.
He ran on taffy legs towards Ptraci and the high priest as the world was
expanded and squeezed around him, and was momentarily gratified to see the girl
squirm in Dios's grip and fetch him a tidy thump on the ear.
He moved as though in a dream, with the distances changing as though reality was
an elastic thing. Another step sent him cannoning into the pair of them. He
grabbed Ptraci's arm and staggered back to the camel stall, where the creature
was still cudding and watching the scene with the nearest thing a camel will
ever get to mild interest, and snatched its halter.
No-one seemed to be interested in stopping them as they helped each other
through the doorway and out into the mad night.
'It helps if you shut your eyes,' said Ptraci.
Teppic tried it. It worked. A stretch of courtyard that his eyes told him was a
quivering rectangle whose sides twanged like bowstrings became, well, just a
courtyard under his feet.
'Gosh, that was clever,' he said. 'How did you think of that?'
'I always shut my eyes when I'm frightened,' said Ptraci.
'Good plan.'
'What's happening?'
'I don't know. I don't want to find out. I think going away from here could be
an amazingly sensible idea. How do you make a camel kneel, did you say? I've got
any amount of sharp things.'
The camel, who had a very adequate grasp of human language as it applied to
threats, knelt down graciously. They scrambled aboard and the landscape lurched
again as the beast jacked itself back on to its feet.
The camel knew perfectly well what was happening. Three stomachs and a digestive
system like an industrial distillation plant gave you a lot of time for sitting
and thinking.
It's not for nothing that advanced mathematics tends to be invented in hot
countries. It's because of the morphic resonance of all the camels, who have
that disdainful expression and famous curled lip as a natural result of an
ability to do quadratic equations.
It's not generally realised that camels have a natural aptitude for advanced
mathematics, particularly where they involve ballistics. This evolved as a
survival trait, in the same way as a human's hand and eye co-ordination, a
chameleon's camouflage and a dolphin's renowned ability to save drowning
swimmers if there's any chance that biting them in half might be observed and
commented upon adversely by other humans.
The fact is that camels are far more intelligent than dolphins.[21]

They are so much brighter that they soon realised that the most prudent thing
any intelligent animal can do, if it would prefer its descendants not to spend a
lot of time on a slab with electrodes clamped to their brains or sticking mines
on the bottom of ships or being patronised rigid by zoologists, is to make
bloody certain humans don't find out about it. So they long ago plumped for a
lifestyle that, in return for a certain amount of porterage and being prodded
with sticks, allowed them adequate food and grooming and the chance to spit in a
human's eye and get away with it.
And this particular camel, the result of millions of years of selective
evolution to produce a creature that could count the grains of sand it was
walking over, and close its nostrils at will, and survive under the broiling sun
for many days without water, was called You Bastard.
And he was, in fact, the greatest mathematician in the world.
You Bastard was thinking: there seems to be some growing dimensional instability
here, swinging from zero to nearly forty-five degrees by the look of it. How
interesting. I wonder what's causing it? Let V equal 3. Let Tau equal Chi/4.
cudcudcud Let Kappa/y be an Evil-Smelling-Bugger[22] differential tensor domain
with four imaginary spin co-efficients...
Ptraci hit him across the head with her sandal. 'Come on, get a move on!' she
yelled. You Bastard thought: Therefore H to the enabling power equals V/s.
cudcudcud Thus in hypersyllogic notation . . .
Teppic looked behind him. The strange distortions in the landscape seemed to be
settling down, and Dios was . . .
Dios was striding out of the palace, and had actually managed to find several
guards whose fear of disobedience overcame the terror of the mysteriously
distorted world.
You Bastard stood stoically chewing. . . cudcudcud which gives us an interesting
shortening oscillation. What would be the period of this? Let period = x.
cudcudcud Let t = time. Let initial period . . .
Ptraci bounced up and down on his neck and kicked hard with her heels, an action
which would have caused any anthropoid male to howl and bang his head against
the wall.
'It won't move! Can't you hit it?'
Teppic brought his hand down as hard as he could on You Bastard's hide, raising
a cloud of dust and deadening every nerve in his fingers. It was like hitting a
large sack full of coathangers.
'Come on,' he muttered.
Dios raised a hand.
'Halt, in the name of the king!' he shouted.
An arrow thudded into You Bastard's hump.
. . . equals 6.3 recurring. Reduce. That gives us ouch . . . 314 seconds . . .
You Bastard turned his long neck around. His great hairy eyebrows made accusing
curves as his yellow eyes narrowed and took a fix on the high priest, and he put
aside the interesting problem for a moment and dredged up the familiar ancient
maths that his race had perfected long ago:
Let range equal forty-one feet. Let windspeed equal 2. Vector one-eight. cud Let
glutinosity equal 7 .
Teppic drew a throwing knife.
Dios took a deep breath. He's going to order them to fire on us, Teppic thought.
In my own name, in my own kingdom, I'm going to be shot.
Angle two-five, cud Fire.
It was a magnificent volley. The gob of cud had commendable lift and spin and
hit with a sound like, a sound like half a pound of semi-digested grass hitting
someone in the face. There was nothing else it could sound like.
The silence that followed was by way of being a standing ovation.
The landscape began to distort again. This was clearly not a place to linger.
You Bastard looked down at his front legs.
Let legs equal four .
He lumbered into a run. Camels apparently have more knees than any other
creature and You Bastard ran like a steam engine, with lots of extraneous
movement at right angles to the direction of motion accompanied by a thunderous
barrage of digestive noises.
'Bloody stupid animal,' muttered Ptraci, as they jolted away from the palace,
'but it looks like it finally got the idea.'
. . . gauge-invariant repetition rate of 3.5/z. What's she talking about, Bloody
Stupid lives over in Tsort . . .
Though they swung through the air as though jointed with bad elastic You
Bastard's legs covered a lot of ground, and already they were bouncing through
the sleeping packed-earth streets of the city.
'It's starting again, isn't it?' said Ptraci. 'I'm going to shut my eyes.'
Teppic nodded. The firebrick-hot houses around them were doing their slow motion
mirror dance again, and the road was rising and falling in a way that solid land
had no right to adopt.
'It's like the sea,' he said.
'I can't see anything,' said Ptraci firmly.
'I mean the sea. The ocean. You know. Waves.'
'I've heard about it. Is anyone chasing us?'
Teppic turned in the saddle. 'Not that I can make out,' he said. 'It looks as-'
From here he could see past the long, low bulk of the palace and across the
river to the Great Pyramid itself. It was almost hidden in dark clouds, but what
he could see of it was definitely wrong. He knew it had four sides, and he could
see all eight of them.
It seemed to be moving in and out of focus, which he felt instinctively was a
dangerous thing for several million tons of rock to do. He felt a pressing urge
to be a long way away from it. Even a dumb creature like the camel seemed to
have the same idea.
You Bastard was thinking: . . Delta squared. Thus, dimensional pressure k will
result in a ninety-degree transformation in Chi(16/x/pu)t for a K-bundle of any
three invariables. Or four minutes, plus or minus ten seconds
The camel looked down at the great pads of his feet.
Let speed equal gallop.
'How did you make it do that?' said Teppic.
'I didn't! It's doing it by itself! Hang on!'
This wasn't easy. Teppic had saddled the camel but neglected the harness. Ptraci
had handfuls of camel hair to hang on to. All he had was handfuls of Ptraci. No
matter where he tried to put his hands, they encountered warm, yielding flesh.
Nothing in his long education had prepared him for this, whereas everything in
Ptraci's obviously had. Her long hair whipped his face and smelled beguilingly
of rare perfume.[23]
'Are you all right?' he shouted above the wind.
'I'm hanging on with my knees!'
'That must be very hard!'
'You get special training!'
Camels gallop by throwing their feet as far away from them as possible and then
running to keep up. Knee joints clicking like chilly castanets, You Bastard
thrashed up the sloping road out of the valley and windmilled along the narrow
gorge that led, under towering limestone cliffs, to the high desert beyond.
And behind them, tormented beyond measure by the inexorable tide of geometry,
unable to discharge its burden of Time, the Great Pyramid screamed, lifted
itself off its base and, its bulk swishing through the air as unstoppably as
something completely unstoppable, ground around precisely ninety degrees and did
something perverted to the fabric of time and space.
You Bastard sped along the gorge, his neck stretched out to its full extent, his
mighty nostrils flaring like jet intakes.
'It's terrified!' Ptraci yelled. 'Animals always know about this sort of thing!'

'What sort of thing!'
'Forest fires and things!'
'We haven't got any trees!'
'Well, floods and - and things! They've got some strange natural instinct!'
. . . Phi* 1700[u/v]. Lateral e/v. Equals a tranche of seven to twelve . . .
The sound hit them. It was as silent as a dandelion clock striking midnight, but
it had pressure. It rolled over them, suffocating as velvet, nauseating as a
battered saveloy.
And was gone.
You Bastard slowed to a walk, a complicated procedure that involved precise
instructions to each leg in turn.
There was a feeling of release, a sense of stress withdrawn. You Bastard
stopped. In the pre-dawn glow he'd spotted a clump of thorned syphacia bushes
growing in the rocks by the track.
. . angle left. x equals 37. y equals 19. z equals 43. Bite . . .
Peace descended. There was no sound except for the eructations of the camel's
digestive tract and the distant warbling of a desert owl.
Ptraci slid off her perch and landed awkwardly.
'My bottom,' she announced, to the desert in general, 'is one huge blister.'
Teppic jumped down and half-ran, half-staggered up the scree by the roadside,
then jogged across the cracked limestone plateau until he could get a good look
at the valley.
It wasn't there any more.

It was still dark when Dil the master embalmer woke up, his body twanging with
the sensation that something was wrong. He slipped out of bed, dressed
hurriedly, and pulled aside the curtain that did duty as a door.
The night was soft and velvety. Behind the chirrup of the insects there was
another sound, a frying noise, a faint sizzling on the edge of hearing.
Perhaps that was what had woken him up.
The air was warm and damp. Curls of mist rose from the river, and-
The pyramids weren't flaring.
He'd grown up in this house: it had been in the family of the master embalmers
for thousands of years, and he'd seen the pyramids flare so often that he didn't
notice them, any more than he noticed his own breathing. But now they were dark
and silent, and the silence cried out and the darkness glared.
But that wasn't the worst part. As his horrified eyes stared up at the empty sky
over the necropolis they saw the stars, and what the stars were stuck to.
Dil was terrified. And then, when he had time to think about it, he was ashamed
of himself. After all, he thought, it's what I've always been told is there. It
stands to reason. I'm just seeing it properly for the first time.
There. Does that make me feel any better?
No.
He turned and ran down the street, sandals flapping, until he reached the house
that held Gern and his numerous family. He dragged the protesting apprentice
from the communal sleeping mat and pulled him into the street, turned his face
to the sky and hissed. 'Tell me what you can see!'
Gern squinted.
'I can see the stars, master,' he said.
'What are they on, boy?'
Gern relaxed slightly. 'That's easy, master. Everyone knows the stars are on the
body of the goddess Nept who arches herself from . . . oh, bloody hell.'
'You can see her, too?'
'Oh, mummy,' whispered Gern, and slid to his knees.
Dil nodded. He was a religious man. It was a great comfort knowing that the gods
were there. It was knowing they were here that was the terrible part.
Because the body of a woman arched over the heavens, faintly blue, faintly
shadowy in the light of the watery stars.
She was enormous, her statistics interstellar. The shadow between her galactic
breasts was a dark nebula, the curve of her stomach a vast wash of glowing gas,
her navel the seething, dark incandescence in which new stars were being born.
She wasn't supporting the sky. She was the sky.
Her huge sad face, upside down on the turnwise horizon, stared directly at Dil.
And Dil was realising that there are few things that so shake belief as seeing,
clearly and precisely, the object of that belief. Seeing, contrary to popular
wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any
more.
'Oh, Sod,' moaned Gern.
Dil struck him across the arm.
'Stop that,' he said. 'And come with me.'
'Oh, master, whatever shall we do?'
Dil looked around at the sleeping city. He hadn't the faintest idea.
'We'll go to the palace,' he said firmly. 'It's probably a trick of the, of the,
of the dark. Anyway, the sun will be up presently.'
He strode off, wishing he could change places with Gern and show just a hint of
gibbering terror. The apprentice followed him at a sort of galloping creep.
'I can see shadows against the stars, master! Can you see them, master? Around
the edge of the world, master!'
'Just mists, boy,' said Dil, resolutely keeping his eyes fixed in front of him
and maintaining a dignified posture as appropriate to the Keeper of the Left
Hand Door of the Matron Lodge and holder of several medals for needlework.
'There,' he said. 'See, Gern, the sun is coming up!'
They stood and watched it.
Then Gern whimpered, very quietly.
Rising up the sky, very slowly, was a great flaming ball. And it was being
pushed by a dung beetle bigger than worlds.
BOOK III
The Book of the New Son
The sun rose and, because this wasn't the Old Kingdom out here, it was a mere
ball of flaming gas. The purple night of the high desert evaporated under its
blowlamp glare. Lizards scuffled into cracks in the rocks. You Bastard settled
himself down in the sparse shadow of what was left of the syphacia bushes,
peered haughtily at the landscape, and began to chew cud and calculate square
roots in base seven.
Teppic and Ptraci eventually found the shade of a limestone overhang, and sat
glumly staring out at the waves of heat wobbling off the rocks.
'I don't understand,' said Ptraci. 'Have you looked everywhere?'
'It's a country! It can't just bloody well fall through a hole in the ground!'
'Where is it, then?' said Ptraci evenly.
Teppic growled. The heat struck like a hammer, but he strode out over the rocks
as though three hundred square miles could perhaps have been hiding under a
pebble or behind a bush.
The fact was that the track dipped between the cliffs, but almost immediately
rose again and continued across the dunes into what was quite clearly Tsort.
He'd recognised a wind-eroded sphinx that had been set up as a boundary marker;
legend said it prowled the borders in times of dire national need, although
legend wasn't sure why.
He knew they had galloped into Ephebe. He should be looking across the fertile,
pyramid-speckled valley of the Djel that lay between the two countries.
He'd spent an hour looking for it.
It was inexplicable. It was uncanny. It was also extremely embarrassing.
He shaded his eyes and stared around for the thousandth time at the silent,
baking landscape. And moved his head. And saw Djelibeybi.
It flashed across his vision in an instant. He jerked his eyes back and saw it
again, a brief flash of misty colour that vanished as soon as he concentrated on
it.
Some minutes later Ptraci peered out of the shade and saw him get down on his
hands and knees. When he started turning over rocks she decided it was time he
should come back in out of the sun.
He shook her hand off his shoulder, and gestured impatiently. 'I've found it!'
He pulled a knife from his boot and started poking at the stones.
'Where?'
'Here!'
She laid a ringed hand on his forehead.
'Oh yes,' she said. 'I see. Yes. Good. Now I think you'd better come into the
shade.'
'No, I mean it! Here! Look!'
She hunkered down and stared at the rock, to humour him.
'There's a crack,' she said, doubtfully.
'Look at it, will you? You have to turn your head and sort of look out of the
corner of your eye.' Teppic's dagger smacked into the crack, which was no more
than a faint line on the rock.
'Well, it goes on a long way,' said Ptraci, staring along the burning pavement.
'All the way from the Second Cataract to the Delta,' said Teppic. 'Covering your
eye with one hand helps. Please give it a try. Please!'
She put one hesitant hand over her eye and squinted obediently at the rock.
Eventually she said. 'It's no good, I can't - seeee-' She stayed motionless for
a moment and then flung herself sideways on to the rocks. Teppic stopped trying
to hammer the knife into the crack and crawled over to her.
'I was right on the edge!' she wailed.
'You saw it?' he said hopefully.
She nodded and, with great care, got to her feet and backed away.
'Did your eyes feel as though they were being turned inside out?' said Teppic.
'Yes,' said Ptraci coldly. 'Can I have my bangles, please?'
'What?'
'My bangles. You put them in your pocket. I want them, please.'
Teppic shrugged, and fished in his pouch. The bangles were mostly copper, with a
few bits of chipped enamel. Here and there the craftsman had tried, without much
success, to do something interesting with twisted bits of wire and lumps of
coloured glass. She took them and slipped them on.
'Do they have some occult significance?' he said.
'What's occult mean?' she said vaguely.
'Oh. What do you need them for, then?'
'I told you. I don't feel properly dressed without them on.' Teppic shrugged,
and went back to rocking his knife in the crack.
'Why are you doing that?' she said. He stopped and thought about it.
'I don't know,' he said. 'But you did see the valley, didn't you?'
'Yes.'
'Well, then?'
'Well what?'
Teppic rolled his eyes. 'Didn't you think it was a bit, well, odd? A whole
country just more or less vanishing? It's something you don't bloody well see
every day, for gods' sake!'
'How should I know? I've never been out of the valley before. I don't know what
it's supposed to look like from outside. And don't swear.'
Teppic shook his head. 'I think I will go and lie down in the shade,' he said.
'What's left of it,' he added, for the brass light of the sun was burning away
the shadows. He staggered over to the rocks and stared at her.
'The whole valley has just closed up,' he managed at last. 'All those people . .

'I saw cooking fires,' said Ptraci, slumping down beside him.
'It's something to do with the pyramid,' he said. 'It looked very strange just
before we left. It's magic, or geometry, or one of those things. How do you
think we can get back?'
'I don't want to go back. Why should I want to go back? It's the crocodiles for
me. I'm not going back, not just for crocodiles.'
'Um. Perhaps I could pardon you, or something,' said Teppic.
'Oh yes,' said Ptraci, looking at her nails. 'You said you were the king, didn't
you.'
'I am the king! That's my kingdom over-' Teppic hesitated, not knowing in which
direction to point his finger - 'somewhere. I'm king of it.'
'You don't look like the king,' said Ptraci.
'Why not?'
'He had a golden mask on.'
'That was me!'
'So you ordered me thrown to the crocodiles?'
'Yes! I mean, no.' Teppic hesitated. 'I mean, the king did. I didn't. In a way.
Anyway, I was the one who rescued you,' he added gallantly.
'There you are, then. Anyway, if you were the king, you'd be a god, too. You
aren't acting very god-like at the moment.'
'Yes? Well. Er.' Teppic hesitated again. Ptraci's literal mindedness meant that
innocent sentences had to be carefully examined before being sent out into the
world.
'I'm basically good at making the sun rise,' he said. 'I don't know how, though.
And rivers. You want any rivers flooding, I'm your man. God, I mean.'
He lapsed into silence as a thought struck him.
'I wonder what's happening in there without me?' he said.
Ptraci stood up and set off down to the gorge.
'Where are you going?'
She turned. 'Well, Mr King or God or assassin, or whatever, can you make water?'

'What, here?'
'I mean to drink. There may be a river hidden in that crack or there may not,
but we can't get at it, can we? So we have to go somewhere where we can. It's so
simple I should think even kings could understand it.'
He hurried after her, down the scree to where You Bastard was lying with his
head and neck flat on the ground, flicking his ears in the heat and idly
applying You Vicious Brute's Theory of Transient Integrals to a succession of
promising cissoid numbers. Ptraci kicked him irritably.
'Do you know where there is water, then?' said Teppic. . . . e/27. Eleven miles
. . .
Ptraci glared at him from kohl-ringed eyes. 'You mean you don't know? You were
going to take me into the desert and you don't know where the water is?'
'Well, I rather expected I was going to be able to take some with me!'
'You didn't even think about it!'
'Listen, you can't talk to me like that! I'm a king!' Teppic stopped.
'You're absolutely right,' he said. 'I never thought about it. Where I come from
it rains nearly every day. I'm sorry.'
Ptraci's brows furrowed. 'Who reigns nearly every day?' she said.
'No, I mean rain. You know. Very thin water coming out of the sky?'
'What a silly idea. Where do you come from?'
Teppic looked miserable. 'Where I come from is Ankh-Morpork. Where I started
from is here.' He stared down the track. From here, if you knew what you were
looking for, you could just see a faint crack running across the rocks. It
climbed the cliffs on either side, a new vertical fault the thickness of a line
that just happened to contain a complete river kingdom and 7,000 years of
history.
He'd hated every minute of his time there. And now it had shut him out. And now,
because he couldn't, he wanted to go back.
He wandered down to it and put his hand over one eye. If you jerked your head
just right . . .
It flashed past his vision briefly, and was gone. He tried a few times more, and
couldn't see it again.
If I hacked the rocks away? No, he thought, that's silly. It's a line. You can't
get into a line. A line has no thickness. Well known fact of geometry.
He heard Ptraci come up behind him, and the next moment her hands were on his
neck. For a second he wondered how she knew the Catharti Death Grip, and then
her fingers were gently massaging his muscles, stresses melting under their
expert caress like fat under a hot knife. He shivered as the tension relaxed.
'That's nice,' he said.
'We're trained for it. Your tendons are knotted up like ping-pong balls on a
string,' said Ptraci.
Teppic gratefully subsided on to one of the boulders that littered the base of
the cliff and let the rhythm of her fingers unwind the problems of the night.
'I don't know what to do,' he murmured. 'That feels good.'
'It's not all peeling grapes, being a handmaiden,' said Ptraci. 'The first
lesson we learn is, when the master has had a long hard day it is not the best
time to suggest the Congress of the Fox and the Persimmon. Who says you have to
do anything?'
'I feel responsible.' Teppic shifted position like a cat.
'If you know where there is a dulcimer I could play you something soothing,'
said Ptraci. 'I've got as far as "Goblins Picnic" in Book I.'
'I mean, a king shouldn't let his kingdom just vanish like that.'
'All the other girls can do chords and everything,' said Ptraci wistfully,
massaging his shoulders. 'But the old king always said he'd rather hear me. He
said it used to cheer him up.'
'I mean, it'll be called the Lost Kingdom,' said Teppic drowsily. 'How will I
feel then, I ask you?'
'He said he liked my singing, too. Everyone else said it sounded like a flock of
vultures who've just found a dead donkey.'
'I mean, king of a Lost Kingdom. It'd be dreadful. I've got to get it back.'
You Bastard slowly turned his massive head to follow the flight of an errant
blowfly; deep in his brain little columns of red numbers flickered, detailing
vectors and speed and elevation. The conversation of human beings seldom
interested him, but it crossed his mind that the males and females always got
along best when neither actually listened fully to what the other one was
saying. It was much simpler with camels.
Teppic stared at the line in the rock. Geometry. That was it. 'We'll go to
Ephebe,' he said. 'They know all about geometry and they have some very unsound
ideas. Unsound ideas are what I could do with right now.'
'Why do you carry all these knives and things? I mean, really?'
'Hmm? Sorry?'
'All these knives. Why?'
Teppic thought about it. 'I suppose I don't feel properly dressed without them,'
he said.
'Oh.'
Ptraci dutifully cast around for a new topic of conversation. Introducing Topics
of Amusing Discourse was also part of a handmaiden's duties. She'd never been
particularly good at it. The other girls had come up with an astonishing
assortment: everything from the mating habits of crocodiles to speculation about
life in the netherworld. She'd found it heavy going after talking about the
weather.
'So,' she said. 'You've killed a lot of people, I expect?'
'Mm?'
'As an assassin, I mean. You get paid to kill people. Have you killed lots? Do
you know you tense your back muscles a lot?'
'I don't think I ought to talk about it,' he said.
'I ought to know. If we've got to cross the desert together and everything. More
than a hundred?'
'Good heavens, no.,
'Well, less than fifty?'
Teppic rolled over.
'Look, even the most famous assassins never killed more than thirty people in
all their lives,' he said.
'Less than twenty, then?'
'Yes.'
'Less than ten?'
'I think,' said Teppic, 'it would be best to say a number between zero and ten.'

'Just so long as I know. These things are important.' They strolled back to You
Bastard. But now it was Teppic who seemed to have something on his mind.
'All this senate . . .' he said.
'Congress,' corrected Ptraci.
'You . . . er . . . more than fifty people?'
'There's a different name for that sort of woman,' said Ptraci, but without much
rancour.
'Sorry. Less than ten?'
'Let's say,' said Ptraci, 'a number between zero and ten.' You Bastard spat.
Twenty feet away the blowfly was picked cleanly out of the air and glued to the
rock behind it.
'Amazing how they do it, isn't it,' said Teppic. 'Animal instinct, I suppose.'
You Bastard gave him a haughty glare from under his sweep-the-desert eyelashes
and thought:
. . . Let z=ei0. cudcudcud Then dz=ie[i0]d0=izd0 or d0=dz/iz . . .

Ptaclusp, still in his nightshirt, wandered aimlessly among the wreckage at the
foot of the pyramid.
It was humming like a turbine. Ptaclusp didn't know why, knew nothing about the
vast expenditure of power that had twisted the dimensions by ninety degrees and
was holding them there against terrible pressures, but at least the disturbing
temporal changes seemed to have stopped. There were fewer sons around than there
used to be; in truth, he could have done with finding one or two.
First he found the capstone, which had shattered, its electrum sheathing peeling
away. In its descent from the pyramid it had hit the statue of Hat the
Vulture-Headed God, bending it double and giving it an expression of mild
surprise.
A faint groan sent him tugging at the wreckage of a tent. He tore at the heavy
canvas and unearthed IIb, who blinked at him in the grey light.
'It didn't work, dad!' he moaned. 'We'd almost got it up there, and then the
whole thing just sort of twisted!'
The builder lifted a spar off his son's legs.
'Anything broken?' he said quietly.
'Just bruised, I think.' The young architect sat up, wincing, and craned to see
around.
'Where's Two-ay?' he said. 'He was higher up than me, nearly on the top-'
'I've found him,' said Ptaclusp.
Architects are not known for their attention to subtle shades of meaning, but
IIb heard the lead in his father's voice.
'He's not dead, is he?' he whispered.
'I don't think so. I'm not sure. He's alive. But. He's moving - he's moving . .
. well, you better come and see. I think something quantum has happened to him.'


You Bastard plodded onwards at about 1.247 metres per second, working out
complex conjugate co-ordinates to stave off boredom while his huge, plate-like
feet crunched on the sand.
Lack of fingers was another big spur to the development of camel intellect.
Human mathematical development had always been held back by everyone's
instinctive tendency, when faced with something really complex in the way of
triform polynomials or parametric differentials, to count fingers. Camels
started from the word go by counting numbers.
Deserts were a great help, too. There aren't many distractions. As far as camels
were concerned, the way to mighty intellectual development was to have nothing
much to do and nothing to do it with.
He reached the crest of the dune, gazed with approval over the rolling sands
ahead of him, and began to think in logarithms.
'What's Ephebe like?' said Ptraci.
'I've never been there. Apparently it's ruled by a Tyrant.'
'I hope we don't meet him, then.'
Teppic shook his head. 'It's not like that,' he said. 'They have a new Tyrant
every five years and they'do something to him first.' He hesitated. 'I think
they ee-lect him.'
'Is that something like they do to tomcats and bulls and things?'
'Er.'
'You know. To make them stop fighting and be more peaceful.'
Teppic winced. 'To be honest, I'm not sure,' he said. 'But I don't think so.
They've got something they do it with, I think it's called a mocracy, and it
means everyone in the whole country can say who the new Tyrant is. One man,
one-' He paused. The political history lesson seemed a very long while ago, and
had introduced concepts never heard of in Djelibeybi or in Ankh-Morpork, for
that matter. He had a stab at it, anyway. 'One man, one vet.'
'That's for the eelecting, then?'
He shrugged. It might be, for all he knew. 'The point is, though, that everyone
can do it. They're very proud of it. Everyone has-' he hesitated again, certain
now that things were amiss - 'the vet. Except for women, of course. And
children. And criminals. And slaves. And stupid people. And people of foreign
extraction. And people disapproved of for, er, various reasons. And lots of
other people. But everyone apart from them. It's a very enlightened
civilisation.'
Ptraci gave this some consideration.
'And that's a mocracy, is it?'
'They invented it in Ephebe, you know,' said Teppic, feeling obscurely that he
ought to defend it.
'I bet they had trouble exporting it,' said Ptraci firmly.

The sun wasn't just a ball of flaming dung pushed across the sky by a giant
beetle. It was also a boat. It depended on how you looked at it.
The light was wrong. It had a flat quality, like water left in a glass for
weeks. There was no joy to it. It illuminated, but without life; like bright
moonlight rather than the light of day.
But Ptaclusp was more worried about his son.
'Do you know what's wrong with him?' he said.
His other son bit his stylus miserably. His hand was hurting. He'd tried to
touch his brother, and the crackling shock had taken the skin off his fingers.
'I might,' he ventured.
'Can you cure it?'
'I don't think so.'
'What is it, then?'
'Well, dad. When we were up on the pyramid . . . well, when it couldn't flare .
. . you see, I'm sure it twisted around . . . time, you see, is just another
dimension . . . um.'
Ptaclusp rolled his eyes. 'None of that architect's talk, boy,' he said. 'What's
wrong with him?'
'I think he's dimensionally maladjusted, dad. Time and space has got a bit mixed
up for him. That's why he's moving sideways all the time.'
Ptaclusp IIb gave his father a brave little smile.
'He always used to move sideways,' said Ptaclusp. His son sighed. 'Yes, dad,' he
said. 'But that was just normal. All accountants move like that. Now he's moving
sideways because that's like, well, it's like Time to him.' Ptaclusp frowned.
Drifting gently sideways wasn't IIa's only problem. He was also flat. Not flat
like a card, with a front, back and edge - but flat from any direction.
'Puts me exactly in mind of them people in the frescoes,' he said. 'Where's his
depth, or whatever you call it?'
'I think that's in Time,' said IIb, helplessly. 'Ours, not his.'
Ptaclusp walked around his son, noting how the flatness followed him. He
scratched his chin.
'So he can walk in Time, can he?' he said slowly.
'That may be possible, yes.'
'Do you think we could persuade him to stroll back a few months and tell us not
to build that bloody pyramid?'
'He can't communicate, dad.'
'Not much change there, then.' Ptaclusp sat down on the rubble, his head in his
hands. It had come to this. One son normal and stupid, one flat as a shadow. And
what sort of life could the poor flat kid have? He'd go through life being used
to open locks, clean the ice off windscreens, and sleeping cheaply in
trouser-presses in hotel bedrooms[24]. Being able to get under doors and read
books without opening them would not be much of a compensation. IIa drifted
sideways, a flat cut-out on the landscape.
'Can't we do anything?' he said. 'Roll him up neatly, or something?'
IIb shrugged. 'We could put something in the way. That might be a good idea. It
would stop anything worse happening to him because it, er, wouldn't have time to
happen in. I think.'
They pushed the bent statue of Hat the Vulture-Headed God into the flat one's
path. After a minute or two his gentle sideways drift brought him up against it.
There was a fat blue spark that melted part of the statue, but the movement
stopped.
'Why the sparks?' said Ptaclusp.
'It's a bit like flarelight, I think.'
Ptaclusp hadn't got where he was today - no, he'd have to correct himself -
hadn't got to where he had been last night without eventually seeing the
advantages in the Unlikeliest situations.
'He'll save on clothing,' he said slowly. 'I mean, he can just paint it on.'
'I don't think you've quite got the idea, dad,' said IIb wearily. He sat down
beside his father and stared across the river to the palace.
'Something going on over there,' said Ptaclusp. 'Do you think they've noticed
the pyramid?'
'I shouldn't be surprised. It's moved around ninety degrees, after all.'
Ptaclusp looked over his shoulder, and nodded slowly.
'Funny, that,' he said. 'Bit of structural instability there.'
'Dad, it's a pyramid! We should have flared it! I told you! The forces involved,
well, it's just too-'
A shadow fell across them. They looked around. They looked up. They looked up a
bit more.
'Oh, my,' said Ptaclusp. 'It's Hat, the Vulture-Headed God...'

Ephebe lay beyond them, a classical poem of white marble lazing around its rock
on a bay of brilliant blue-
'What's that?' said Ptraci, after studying it critically for some time.
'It's the sea,' said Teppic. 'I told you, remember. Waves and things.'
'You said it was all green and rough.'
'Sometimes it is.'
'Hmm.' The tone of voice suggested that she disapproved of the sea but, before
she could explain why, they heard the sound of voices raised in anger. They were
coming from behind a nearby sand dune.
There was a notice on the dune.
It said, in several languages: AXIOM TESTING STATION.
Below it, in slightly smaller writing, it added: CAUTION - UNRESOLVED
POSTULATES.
As they read it, or at least as Teppic read it and Ptraci didn't, there was a
twang from behind the dune, followed by a click, followed by an arrow zipping
overhead. You Bastard glanced up at it briefly and then turned his head and
stared fixedly at a very small area of sand.
A second later the arrow thudded into it.
Then he tested the weight on his feet and did a small calculation which revealed
that two people had been subtracted from his back. Further summation indicated
that they had been added to the dune.
'What did you do that for?' said Ptraci, spitting out sand.
'Someone fired at us!'
'I shouldn't think so. I mean, they didn't know we were here, did they? You
needn't have pulled me off like that.'
Teppic conceded this, rather reluctantly, and eased himself cautiously up the
sliding surface of the dune. The voices were arguing again
'Give in?'
'We simply haven't got all the parameters right.'
'I know what we haven't got all right.'
'What is that, pray?'
'We haven't got any more bloody tortoises. That's what we haven't got.'
Teppic carefully poked his head over the top of the dune. He saw a large cleared
area, surrounded by complicated ranks of markers and flags. There were one or
two buildings in it, mostly consisting of cages, and several other intricate
constructions he could not recognise. In the middle of it all were two men - one
small, fat and florid, the other tall and willowy and with an indefinable air of
authority. They were wearing sheets. Clustered around them, and not wearing very
much at all, was a group of slaves. One of them was holding a bow.
Several of them were holding tortoises on sticks. They looked a bit pathetic,
like tortoise lollies.
'Anyway, it's cruel,' said the tall man. 'Poor little things. They look so sad
with their little legs waggling.'
'It's logically impossible for the arrow to hit them!' The fat man threw up his
hands. 'It shouldn't do it! You must be giving me the wrong type of tortoise,'
he added accusingly.
'We ough to try again with faster tortoises.'
'Or slower arrows?'
'Possibly, possibly.'
Teppic was aware of a faint scuffling by his chin. There was a small tortoise
scurrying past him. It had several ricochet marks on its shell.
'We'll have one last try,' said the fat man. He turned to the slaves. 'You lot -
go and find that tortoise.'
The little reptile gave Teppic a look of mingled pleading and hope. He stared at
it, and then lifted it up carefully and tucked it behind a rock.
He slid back down the dune to Ptraci.
'There's something really weird going on over there,' he said. 'They're shooting
tortoises.'
'Why?'
'Search me. They seem to think the tortoise ought to be able to run away.
'What, from an arrow?'
'Like I said. Really weird. You stay here. I'll whistle if it's safe to follow
me.'
'What will you do if it isn't safe?'
'Scream.'
He climbed the dune again and, after brushing as much sand as possible off his
clothing, stood up and waved his cap at the little crowd. An arrow took it out
of his hands.
'Oops!' said the fat man. 'Sorry!'
He scurried across the trampled sand to where Teppic was standing and staring at
his stinging fingers.
'Just had it in my hand,' he panted. 'Many apologies, didn't realise it was
loaded. Whatever will you think of me?'
Teppic took a deep breath.
'Xeno's the name,' gasped the fat man, before he could speak. 'Are you hurt? We
did put up warning signs, I'm sure. Did you come in over the desert? You must be
thirsty. Would you like a drink? Who are you? You haven't seen a tortoise up
there, have you? Damned fast things, go like greased thunderbolts, there's no
stopping the little buggers.'
Teppic deflated again.
'Tortoises?' he said. 'Are we talking about those, you know, stones on legs?'
'That's right, that's right,' said Xeno. 'Take your eyes off them for a second,
and vazoom!'
'Vazoom?' said Teppic. He knew about tortoises. There were tortoises in the Old
Kingdom. They could be called a lot of things - vegetarians, patient,
thoughtful, even extremely diligent and persistent sex-maniacs - but never, up
until now, fast. Fast was a word particularly associated with tortoises because
they were not it.
'Are you sure?' he said.
'Fastest animal on the face of the Disc, your common tortoise,' said Xeno, but
he had the grace to look shifty.
'Logically, that is,' he added[25].

The tall man gave Teppic a nod.
'Take no notice of him, boy,' he said. 'He's just covering himself because of
the accident last week.'
'The tortoise did beat the hare,' said Xeno sulkily.
'The hare was dead, Xeno,' said the tall man patiently.
'Because you shot it.'
'I was aiming at the tortoise. You know, trying to combine two experiments, cut
down on expensive research time, make full use of available-' Xeno gestured with
the bow, which now had another arrow in it.
'Excuse me,' said Teppic. 'Could you put it down a minute? Me and my friend have
come a long way and it would be nice not to be shot at again.'
These two seem harmless, he thought, and almost believed it.
He whistled. On cue, Ptraci came around the dune, leading You Bastard. Teppic
doubted the capability of her costume to hold any pockets whatsoever, but she
seemed to have been able to repair her make-up, re-kohl her eyes and put up her
hair. She undulated towards the group like a snake in a skid, determined to hit
the strangers with the full force of her personality. She was also holding
something in her other hand.
'She's found the tortoise!' said Xeno. 'Well done!'
The reptile shot back into its shell. Ptraci glared. She didn't have much in the
world except herself, and didn't like to be hailed as a mere holder of
testudinoids.
The tall man sighed. 'You know, Xeno,' he said, 'I can't help thinking you've
got the wrong end of the stick with this whole tortoise-and-arrow business.'
The little man glared at him.
'The trouble with you, Ibid,' he said, 'is that you think you're the biggest
bloody authority on everything.'

The Gods of the Old Kingdom were awakening.
Belief is a force. It's a weak force, by comparison with gravity; when it comes
to moving mountains, gravity wins every time. But it still exists, and now that
the Old Kingdom was enclosed upon itself, floating free of the rest of the
universe, drifting away from the general consensus that is dignified by the name
of reality, the power of belief was making itself felt.
For seven thousand years the people of Djelibeybi had believed in their gods.
Now their gods existed. They had, as it were, the complete Set.
And the people of the Old Kingdom were learning that, for example, Vut the
Dog-Headed God of the Evening looks a lot better painted on a pot than he does
when all seventy feet of him, growling and stinking, is lurching down the Street
outside.
Dios sat in the throne room, the gold mask of the king on his knees, staring out
across the sombre air. The cluster of lesser priests around the door finally
plucked up the courage to approach him, in the same general frame of mind as you
would approach a growling lion. No-one is more worried by the actual physical
manifestation of a god than his priests; it's like having the auditors in
unexpectedly.
Only Koomi stood a little aside from the others. He was thinking hard. Strange
and original thoughts were crowding along rarely-trodden neural pathways,
heading in unthinkable directions. He wanted to see where they led.
'O Dios,' murmured the high priest of Ket, the This-Headed God of Justice. 'What
is the king's command? The gods are striding the land, and they are fighting and
breaking houses, O Dios. Where is the king? What would he have us do?'
'Yea,' said the high priest of Scrab, the Pusher of the Ball of the Sun. He felt
something more was expected of him. 'And verily,' he added. 'Your lordship will
have noticed that the sun is wobbling, because all the Gods of the Sun are
fighting for it and-' he shuffled his feet - 'the blessed Scrab made a strategic
withdrawal and has, er, made an unscheduled landing on the town of Hort. A
number of buildings broke his fall.'
'And rightly so,' said the high priest of Thrrp, the Charioteer of the Sun.
'For, as all know, my master is the true god of the-'
His words tailed off.
Dios was trembling, his body rocking slowly back and forth. His eyes stared at
nothing. His hands gripped the mask almost hard enough to leave fingerprints in
the gold, and his lips soundlessly shaped the words of the Ritual of the Second
Hour, which had been said at this time for thousands of years.
'I think it's the shock,' said one of the priests. 'You know, he's always been
so set in his ways.'
The others hastened to show that there was at least something they could advise
on.
'Fetch him a glass of water.'
'Put a paper bag over his head.'
'Sacrifice a chicken under his nose.'
There was a high-pitched whistling noise, the distant crump of an explosion, and
a long hissing. A few tendrils of steam curled into the room.
The priests rushed to the balcony, leaving Dios in his unnerving pool of trauma,
and found that the crowds around the palace were staring at the sky.
'It would appear,' said the high priest of Cephut, God of Cutlery, who felt that
he could take a more relaxed view of the immediate situation, 'that Thrrp has
fumbled it and has fallen to a surprise tackle from Jeht, Boatman of the Solar
Orb.'
There was a distant buzzing, as of several billion bluebottles taking off in a
panic, and a huge dark shape passed over the palace.
'But,' said the high priest of Cephut, 'here comes Scrab again . . . yes, he's
gaining height . . . Jeht hasn't seen him yet, he's progressing confidently
towards the meridian, and here comes Sessifet, Goddess of the Afternoon! This is
a surprise! What a surprise this is! A young goddess, yet to make her mark, but
my word, what a lot of promise there, this is an astonishing bid, eunuchs and
gentlemen, and . . yes . . . Scrab has fumbled it! He's fumbled it! . . .'
The shadows danced and spun on the stones of the balcony.
'. . . and . . . what's this? The elder gods are, there's no other word for it,
they're co-operating against these brash newcomers! But plucky young Sessifet is
hanging in there, she's exploiting the weakness. . . she's in! . . . and pulling
away now, pulling away, Gil and Scrab appear to be fighting, she's got a clear
sky and, yes, yes . . . yes! . . . it's noon! It's noon! It's noon!'
Silence. The priest was aware that everyone was staring at him.
Then someone said, 'Why are you shouting into that bulrush?'
'Sorry. Don't know what came over me there.'
The priestess of Sarduk, Goddess of Caves, snorted at him.
'Suppose one of them had dropped it?' she snapped.
'But . . . but . . .' He swallowed. 'It's not possible, is it? Not really? We
all must have eaten something, or been out in the sun too long, or something.
Because, I mean, everyone knows that the gods aren't . . . I mean, the sun is a
big flaming ball of gas, isn't it, that goes around the whole world every day,
and, and, and the gods... well, you know, there's a very real need in people to
believe, don't get me wrong here-'
Koomi, even with his head buzzing with thoughts of perfidy, was quicker on the
uptake than his colleagues.
'Get him, lads!' he shouted.
Four priests grabbed the luckless cutlery worshipper by his arms and legs and
gave him a high-speed run across the stones to the edge of the balcony, over the
parapet and into the mud-coloured waters of the Djel.
He surfaced, spluttering.
'What did you go and do that for?' he demanded. 'You all know I'm right. None of
you really-'
The waters of the Djel opened a lazy jaw, and he vanished, just as the huge
winged shape of Scrab buzzed threateningly over the palace and whirred off
towards the mountains.
Koomi mopped his forehead.
'Bit of a close shave there,' he said. His colleagues nodded, staring at the
fading ripples. Suddenly, Djeibeybi was no place for honest doubt. Honest doubt
could get you seriously picked up and your arms and legs torn off.
'Er,.' said one of them. 'Cephut's going to be a bit upset, though, isn't he?'
'All hail Cephut,' they chorused. Just in case.
'Don't see why,' grumbled an elderly priest at the back of the crowd. 'Bloody
knife and fork artist.'
They grabbed him, still protesting, and hurled him into the river.
'All hail-' They paused. 'Who was he high priest of, anyway?'
'Bunu, the Goat-headed God of Goats? Wasn't he?'
'All hail Bunu, probably,' they chorused, as the sacred crocodiles homed in like
submarines.
Koomi raised his hands, imploring. It is said that the hour brings forth the
man. He was the kind of man that is brought forth by devious and unpleasant
hours, and underneath his bald head certain conclusions were beginning to
unfold, like things imprisoned for years inside stones. He wasn't yet sure what
they were, but they were broadly on the subject of gods, the new age, the need
for a firm hand on the helm, and possibly the inserting of Dios into the nearest
crocodile. The mere thought filled him with forbidden delight.
'Brethren!' he cried.
'Excuse me,' said the priestess of Sarduk.
'And sistren-'
'Thank you.'
'-let us rejoice!' The assembled priests stood in total silence. This was a
radical approach which had not hitherto occurred to them. And Koomi looked at
their upturned faces and felt a thrill the like of which he had never
experienced before. They were frightened out of their wits, and they were
expecting him - him - to tell them what to do.
'Yea!' he said. 'And, indeed, verily, the hour of the gods-'
'-and goddesses-'
'-yes, and goddesses, is at hand. Er.'
What next? What, when you got right down to it, was he going to tell them to do?
And then he thought: it doesn't matter. Provided I sound confident enough. Old
Dios always drove them, he never tried to lead them. Without him they're
wandering around like sheep.
'And, brethren - and sistren, of course - we must ask ourselves, we must ask
ourselves, we, er, yes.' His voice waxed again with new confidence. 'Yes, we
must ask ourselves why the gods are at hand. And without doubt it is because we
have not been assiduous enough in our worship, we have, er, we have lusted after
graven idols.'
The priests exchanged glances. Had they? How did you do it, actually?
'And, yes, and what about sacrifices? Time was when a sacrifice was a sacrifice,
not some messing around with a chicken and flowers.'
This caused some coughing in the audience.
'Are we talking maidens here?' said one of the priests uncertainly.
'Ahem.'
'And inexperienced young men too, certainly,' he said quickly. Sarduk was one of
the older goddesses, whose female worshippers got up to no good in sacred
groves; the thought of her wandering around the landscape somewhere, bloody to
the elbows, made the eyes water.
Koomi's heart thumped. 'Well, why not?' he said. 'Things were better then,
weren't they?'
'But, er, I thought we stopped all that sort of thing. Population decline and so
forth.'
There was a monstrous splash out in the river. Tzut, the Snake-Headed God of the
Upper Djel, surfaced and regarded the assembled priesthood solemnly. Then Fhez,
the Crocodile-Headed God of the Lower Djel, erupted beside him and made a
spirited attempt at biting his head off. The two submerged in a column of spray
and a minor tidal wave which slopped over the balcony.
'Ah, but maybe the population declined because we stopped sacrificing virgins -
of both sexes, of course,' said Koomi, hurriedly. 'Have you ever thought of it
like that?' They thought of it. Then they thought of it again.
'I don't think the king would approve-' said one of the priests cautiously.
'The king?' shouted Koomi. 'Where is the king? Show me the king! Ask Dios where
the king is!'
There was a thud by his feet. He looked down in horror as the gold mask bounced,
and rolled towards the priests. They scattered hurriedly, like skittles.
Dios strode out into the light of the disputed sun, his face grey with fury.
'The king is dead,' he said.
Koomi swayed under the sheer pressure of anger, but rallied magnificently.
'Then his successor-' he began.
'There is no successor,' said Dios. He stared up at the sky. Few people can look
directly at the sun, but under the venom of Dios's gaze the sun itself might
have flinched and looked away. Dios's eyes sighted down that fearsome nose like
twin range finders.
To the air in general he said: 'Coming here as if they own the place. How dare
they?'
Koomi's mouth dropped open. He started to protest, and a kilowatt stare silenced
him.
Koomi sought support from the crowd of priests, who were busily inspecting their
nails or staring intently into the middle distance. The message was clear. He
was on his own. Although, if by some chance he won the battle of wills, he'd be
surrounded by people assuring him that they had been behind him all along.
'Anyway, they do own the place,' he mumbled.
'What?'
'They, er, they do own the place, Dios,' Koomi repeated. His temper gave out.
'They're the sodding gods, Dios!'
'They're our gods,' Dios hissed. 'We're not their people. They're my gods and
they will learn to do as they are instructed!'
Koomi gave up the frontal assault. You couldn't outstare that sapphire stare,
you couldn't stand the war-axe nose and, most of all, no man could be expected
to dent the surface of Dios's terrifying righteousness.
'But-' he managed.
Dios waved him into silence with a trembling hand.
'They've no right! ' he said. 'I did not give any orders! They have no right!'
'Then what are you going to do?' said Koomi.
Dios's hands opened and closed fitfully. He felt like a royalist might feel - a
good royalist, a royalist who cut out pictures of all the Royals and stuck them
in a scrapbook, a royalist who wouldn't hear a word said about them, they did
such a good job and they can't answer back - if suddenly all the Royals turned
up in his living room and started rearranging the furniture. He longed for the
necropolis, and the cool silence among his old friends, and a quick sleep after
which he'd be able to think so much more clearly . . .
Koomi's heart leapt. Dios's discomfort was a crack which, with due care and
attention, could take a wedge. But you couldn't use a hammer. Head on, Dios
could outfight the world.
The old man was shaking again. 'I do not presume to tell them how to run affairs
in the Hereunder,' he said. 'They shall not presume to instruct me in how to run
my kingdom.'
Koomi salted this treasonable statement away for further study and patted him
gently on the back.
'You're right, of course,' he said. Dios's eyes swivelled.
'I am?' he said, suspiciously.
'I'm sure that, as the king's minister, you will find a way. You have our full
support, O Dios.' Koomi waved an uplifted hand at the priests, who chorused
wholehearted agreement. If you couldn't depend on kings and gods, you could
always rely on old Dios. There wasn't one of them that wouldn't prefer the
uncertain wrath of the gods to a rebuke from Dios. Dios terrified them in a very
positive, human way that no supernatural entity ever could. Dios would sort it
out.
'And we take no heed to these mad rumours about the king's disappearance. They
are undoubtedly wild exaggerations, with no foundation,' said Koomi.
The priests nodded while, in each mind, a tiny rumour uncurled the length of its
tail.
'What rumours?' said Dios out of the corner of his mouth.
'So enlighten us, master, as to the path we must now take,' said Koomi.
Dios wavered.
He did not know what to do. For him, this was a new experience. This was Change.

All he could think of, all that was pressing forward in his mind, were the words
of the Ritual of the Third Hour, which he had said at this time for - how long?
Too long, too long! - And he should have gone to his rest long before, but the
time had never been right, there was never anyone capable, they would have been
lost without him, the kingdom would founder, he would be letting everyone down,
and so he'd crossed the river. . . he swore every time that it was the last, but
it never was, not when the chill fetched his limbs, and the decades had become -
longer. And now, when his kingdom needed him, the words of a Ritual had scored
themselves into the pathways of his brain and bewildered all attempts at
thought.
'Er,' he said.

You Bastard chewed happily. Teppic had tethered him too near an olive tree,
which was getting a terminal pruning. Sometimes the camel would stop, gaze up
briefly at the seagulls that circled everywhere above Ephebe city, and subject
them to a short, deadly burst of olive stones.
He was turning over in his mind an interesting new concept in Thau-dimensional
physics which unified time, space, magnetism, gravity and, for some reason,
broccoli. Periodically he would make noises like distant quarry blasting, but
which merely indicated that all stomachs were functioning perfectly.
Ptraci sat under the tree, feeding the tortoise on vine leaves.
Heat crackled off the white walls of the tavern but, Teppic thought, how
different it was from the Old Kingdom. There even the heat was old; the air was
musty and lifeless, it pressed like a vice, you felt it was made of boiled
centuries. Here it was leavened by the breeze from the sea. It was edged with
salt crystals. It carried exciting hints of wine; more than a hint in fact,
because Xeno was already on his second amphora. This was the kind of place where
things rolled up their sleeves and started.
'But I still don't understand about the tortoise,' he said, with some
difficulty. He'd just taken his first mouthful of Ephebian wine, and it had
apparently varnished the back of his throat.
''S quite simple,' said Xeno. 'Look, let's say this olive stone is the arrow and
this, and this-' he cast around aimlessly - 'and this stunned seagull is the
tortoise, right? Now, when you fire the arrow it goes from here to the seag -
the tortoise, am I right?'
'I suppose so, but-'
'But, by this time, the seagu - the tortoise has moved on a bit, hasn't he? Am I
right?'
'I suppose so,' said Teppic, helplessly. Xeno gave him a look of triumph.
'So the arrow has to go a bit further, doesn't it, to where the tortoise is now.
Meanwhile the tortoise has flow - moved on, not much, I'll grant you, but it
doesn't have to be much. Am I right? So the arrow has a bit further to go, but
the point is that by the time it gets to where the tortoise is now the tortoise
isn't there. So, if the tortoise keeps moving, the arrow will never hit it.
It'll keep getting closer and closer but never hit it. QED.'
'Are you right?' said Teppic automatically.
'No,' said Ibid coldly. 'There's a dozen tortoise kebabs to prove him wrong. The
trouble with my friend here is that he doesn't know the difference between a
postulate and a metaphor of human existence. Or a hole in the ground.'
'It didn't hit it yesterday,' snapped Xeno.
'Yes, I was watching. You hardly pulled the string back. I saw you,' said Ibid.
They started to argue again.
Teppic stared into his wine mug. These men are philosophers, he thought. They
had told him so. So their brains must be so big that they have room for ideas
that no-one else would consider for five seconds. On the way to the tavern Xeno
had explained to him, for example, why it was logically impossible to fall out
of a tree.
Teppic had described the vanishing of the kingdom, but he hadn't revealed his
position in it. He hadn't a lot of experience of these matters, but he had a
very clear feeling that kings who hadn't got a kingdom any more were not likely
to be very popular in neighbouring countries. There had been one or two like
that in Ankh-Morpork - deposed royalty, who had fled their suddenly-dangerous
kingdoms for Ankh's hospitable bosom carrying nothing but the clothes they stood
up in and a few wagonloads of jewels. The city, of course, welcomed anyone -
regardless of race, colour, class or creed - who had spending money in
incredible amounts, but nevertheless the inhumation of surplus monarchs was a
regular source of work for the Assassins' Guild. There was always someone back
home who wanted to be certain that deposed monarchs stayed that way. It was
usually a case of heir today, gone tomorrow.
'I think it got caught up in geometry,' he said, hopefully. 'I heard you were
very good at geometry here,' he added, 'and perhaps you could tell me how to get
back.'
'Geometry is not my forte,' said Ibid. 'As you probably know.'
'Sorry?'
'Haven't you read my Principles of Ideal Government?'
'I'm afraid not.'
'Or my Discourse on Historical Inevitability?'
'No.'
Ibid looked crestfallen. 'Oh,' he said.
'Ibid is a well-known authority on everything,' said Xeno. 'Except for geometry.
And interior decorating. And elementary logic.' Ibid glared at him.
'What about you, then?' said Teppic.
Xeno drained his mug. 'I'm more into the destruct testing of axioms,' he said.
'The chap you need is Pthagonal. A very acute man with an angle.'
He was interrupted by the clatter of hooves. Several horsemen galloped with
reckless speed past the tavern and on up the winding, cobbled streets of the
city. They seemed very excited about something.
Ibid picked a stunned seagull out of his wine cup and laid it on the table. He
was looking thoughtful.
'If the Old Kingdom has really disappeared-' he said.
'It has,' said Teppic firmly. 'It's not something you can be mistaken about,
really.'
'Then that means our border is concurrent with that of Tsort,' said Ibid
ponderously.
'Pardon?' said Teppic.
'There's nothing between us,' explained the philosopher.
'Oh, dear. That means we shall be forced to make war.'
'Why?'
Ibid opened his mouth, stopped, and turned to Xeno.
'Why does it mean we'll be forced to make war?' he said.
'Historical imperative,' said Xeno.
'Ah, yes. I knew it was something like that. I am afraid it is inevitable. It's
a shame, but there you are.'
There was another clatter as another party of horsemen rounded the corner,
heading downhill this time. They wore the high plumed helmets of Ephebian
soldiery, and were shouting enthusiastically.
Ibid settled himself more comfortably on the bench and folded his bands.
'That'll be the Tyrant's men,' he said, as the troop galloped through the city
gates and out on to the desert. 'He's sending them to check, you may depend upon
it.'
Teppic knew about the enmity between Ephebe and Tsort, of course. The Old
Kingdom had profited mightily by it, by seeing that the merchants of both sides
had somewhere discreet in which to trade with one another. He drummed his
fingers on the table.
'You haven't fought each other for thousands of years,' he said. 'You were tiny
countries in those days. It was just a scrap. Now you're huge. People could get
hurt. Doesn't that worry you?'
'It's a matter of pride,' said Ibid, but his voice was tinged with uncertainty.
'I don't think there's much choice.'
'It was that bloody wooden cow or whatever,' said Xeno. 'They've never forgiven
us for it.'
'If we don't attack them, they'll attack us first,' said Ibid.
''S'right,' said Xeno. 'So we'd better retaliate before they have a chance to
strike.'
The two philosophers stared uncomfortably at one another.
'On the other hand,' said Thid, 'war makes it very difficult to think straight.'

'There is that,' Xeno agreed. 'Especially for dead people.' There was an
embarrassed silence, broken only by Ptraci's voice singing to the tortoise and
the occasional squeak of stricken seagulls.
'What day is it?' said Ibid.
'Tuesday,' said Teppic.
'I think,' said Thid, 'that it might be a good idea if you came to the
symposium. We have one every Tuesday,' he added. 'All the greatest minds in
Ephebe will be there. All this needs thinking about.'
He glanced at Ptraci.
'However,' he said, 'your young woman cannot attend, naturally. Females are
absolutely forbidden. Their brains overheat.'