King Teppicymon XXVII opened his eyes. It's bloody dark in here, he thought.
And he realised that he could hear his own heart beating, but muffled, and some
way off.
And then he remembered.
He was alive. He was alive again. And, this time, he was in bits.
Somehow, he'd assumed that you got assembled again once you got to the
netherworld, like one of Grinjer's kits.
Get a grip on yourself, man, he thought.
It's up to you to pull yourself together.
Right, he thought. There were at least six jars. So my eyes are in one of them.
Getting the lid off would be favourite, so we can see what we're at.
That's going to involve arms and legs and fingers.
This is going to be really tricky.
He reached out, tentatively, with stiff joints, and located something heavy. It
felt as though it might give, so he moved his other arm into position, with a
great deal of awkwardness, and pushed.
There was a distant thump, and a definite feeling of openness above him. He sat
up, creaking all the way.
The sides of the ceremonial casket still hemmed him in, but to his surprise he
found that one slow arm movement brushed them out of the way like paper. Must be
all the pickle and stuffing, he thought. Gives you a bit of weight.
He felt his way to the edge of the slab, lowered his heavy legs to the ground
and, after a pause out of habit to wheeze a bit, took the first tottering lurch
of the newly undead.
It is astonishingly difficult to walk with legs full of straw when the brain
doing the directing is in a pot ten feet away, but he made it as far as the wall
and felt his way along it until a crash indicated that he'd reached the shelf of
jars. He fumbled the lids of the first one and dipped his hand gently inside.
It must be brains, he thought maniacally, because semolina doesn't squidge like
that. I've collected my own thoughts, haha.
He tried one or two more jars until an explosion of daylight told him he'd found
the one with his eyes in. He watched his own bandaged hand reach down, growing
gigantic, and scoop them up carefully.
That seems to be the important bits, he thought. The rest can wait until later.
Maybe when I need to eat something, and so forth.
He turned around, and realised that he was not alone. Dil and Gern were watching
him. To squeeze any further into the far corner of the room, they would have
needed triangular backbones.
'Ah. Ho there, good people,' said the king, aware that his voice was a little
hollow. 'I know so much about you, I'd like to shake you by the hand.' He looked
down. 'Only they're rather full at the moment,' he added.
'Gkkk,' said Gern.
'You couldn't do a bit of reassembly, could you?' said the king, turning to Dil.
'Your stitches seem to be holding up nicely, by the way. Well done, that man.'
Professional pride broke through the barrier of Dil's terror.
'You're alive?' he said.
'That was the general idea, wasn't it?' said the king.
Dil nodded. Certainly it was. He'd always believed it to be true. He'd just
never expected it ever actually to happen. But it had, and the first words,
well, nearly the first words that had been said were in praise of his
needlework. His chest swelled. No-one else in the Guild had ever been
congratulated on their work by a recipient.
'There,' he said to Gern, whose shoulderblades were making a spirited attempt to
dig their way through the wall. 'Hear what has been said to your master.
The king paused. It was beginning to dawn on him that things weren't quite right
here. Of course the netherworld was like this world, only better, and no doubt
there were plenty of servants and so forth. But it seemed altogether far too
much like this world. He was pretty sure that Dil and Gern shouldn't be in it
yet. Anyway, he'd always understood that the common people had their own
netherworld, where they would be more at ease and could mingle with their own
kind and wouldn't feel awkward and socially out of place.
'I say,' he said. 'I may have missed a bit here. You're not dead, are you?'
Dil didn't answer immediately. Some of the things he'd seen so far today had
made him a bit uncertain on the subject. In the end, though, he was forced to
admit that he probably was alive.
'Then what's happening?' said the king.
'We don't know, O king,' said Dil. 'Really we don't. It's all come true, O fount
of waters!'
'What has?'
'Everything!'
'Everything?'
'The sun, O lord. And the gods! Oh, the gods! They're everywhere, O master of
heaven!'
'We come in through the back way,' said Gern, who had dropped to his knees.
'Forgive us, O lord of justice, who has come back to deliver his mighty wisdom
and that. I am sorry about me and Glwenda, it was a moment of wossname, mad
passion, we couldn't control ourselves. Also, it was me-'
Dil waved him into a devout silence.
'Excuse me,' he said to the king's mummy. 'But could we have a word away from
the lad? Man to-'
'Corpse?' said the king, trying to make it easy for him. 'Certainly.'
They wandered over to the other side of the room.
'The fact is, O gracious king of-' Dil began, in a conspiratorial whisper.
'I think we can dispense with all that,' said the king briskly. 'The dead don't
stand on ceremony. "King" will be quite sufficient.'
'The fact is, then - king,' said Dil, experiencing a slight thrill at this
equitable treatment, 'young Gern thinks it's all his fault. I've told him over
and over again that the gods wouldn't go to all this trouble just because of one
growing lad with urges, if you catch my drift.' He paused, and added carefully,
'They wouldn't, would they?'
'Shouldn't think so for one minute,' said the king briskly. 'We'd never see the
back of them, otherwise.'
'That's what I told him,' said Dil, immensely relieved. 'He's a good boy, sir,
it's just that his mum is a bit funny about religion. We'd never see the back of
them, those were my very words. I'd be very grateful if you could have a word
with him, sir, you know, set his mind at rest-'
'Be happy to,' said the king graciously.
Dil sidled closer.
'The fact is, sir, these gods, sir, they aren't right. We've been watching, sir.
At least, I have. I climbed on the roof. Gern didn't, he hid under the bench.
They're not right, sir!'
'What's wrong with them?'
'Well, they're here, sir! That's not right, is it? I mean, not to be really
here. And they're just striding around and fighting amongst themselves and
shouting at people.' He looked both ways before continuing. 'Between you and me,
sir,' he said, 'they don't seem too bright.'
The king nodded. 'What are the priests doing about this?' he said.
'I saw them throwing one another in the river, sir.'
The king nodded again. 'That sounds about right,' he said. 'They've come to
their senses at last.'
'You know what I think, sir?' said Dil earnestly. 'Everything we believe is
coming true. And I heard something else, sir. This morning, if it was this
morning, you understand, because the sun's all over the place, sir, and it's not
the right sort of sun, but this morning some of the soldiers tried to get out
along the Ephebe road, sir, and do you know what they found?'
'What did they find?'
'The road out, sir, leads in!' Dil took a step backwards the better to
illustrate the seriousness of the revelations. 'They got up into the rocks and
then suddenly they were walking down the Tsort road. It all sort of curves back
on itself. We're shut in, sir. Shut in with our gods.'
And I'm shut in my body, thought the king. Everything we believe is true? And
what we believe isn't what we think we believe.
I mean, we think we believe that the gods are wise and just and powerful, but
what we really believe is that they are like our father after a long day. And we
think we believe the netherworld is a sort of paradise, but we really believe
it's right here and you go to it in your body and I'm in it and I'm never going
to get away. Never, ever.
'What's my son got to say about all this?' he said. Dil coughed. It was the
ominous cough. The Spanish use an upside-down question mark to tell you what
you're about to hear is a question; this was the kind of cough that tells you
what you're about to hear is a dirge.
'Don't know how to tell you this, sir,' he said.
'Out with it, man.'
'Sir, they say he's dead, sir. They say he killed himself and ran away.
'Killed himself?'
'Sorry, sir.'
'And ran away afterwards?'
'On a camel, they say.'
'We lead an active afterlife in our family, don't we?' observed the king dryly.
'Beg pardon, sir?'
'I mean, the two statements could be held to be mutually exclusive.'
Dil's face became a well-meaning blank.
'That is to say, they can't both be true,' supplied the king, helpfully.
'Ahem,' said Dil.
'Yes, but I'm a special case,' said the king testily. 'In this kingdom we
believe you live after death only if you've been mumm-'
He stopped.
It was too horrible to think about. He thought about it, nevertheless, for some
time.
Then he said, 'We must do something about it.'
Dil said, 'Your son, sir?'
'Never mind about my son, he's not dead, I'd know about it,' snapped the king.
'He can look after himself, he's my son. It's my ancestors I'm worried about.'
'But they're dead-' Dil began.
It has already been remarked that Dil had a very poor imagination. In a job like
his a poor imagination was essential. But his mind's eye opened on a panorama of
pyramids, stretching along the river, and his mind's ear swooped and curved
through solid doors that no thief could penetrate.
And it heard the scrabbling.
And it heard the hammering.
And it heard the muffled shouting.
The king put a bandaged arm over his trembling shoulders.
'I know you're a good man with a needle, Dil,' he said. 'Tell me - how are you
with a sledgehammer?'

Copolymer, the greatest storyteller in the history of the world, sat back and
beamed at the greatest minds in the world, assembled at the dining table.
Teppic had added another iota to his store of new knowledge. 'Symposium' meant a
knife-and-fork tea.
'Well,' said Copolymer, and launched into the story of the Tsortean Wars.
'You see, what happened was, he'd taken her back home, and her father - this
wasn't the old king, this was the one before, the one with the wossname, he
married some girl from over Elharib way, she had a squint, what was her name
now, began with a P. Or an L. One of them letters, anyway. Her father owned an
island out on the bay there, Papylos I think it was. No, I tell a lie, it was
Crinix. Anyway, the king, the other king, he raised an army and they . . .
Elenor, that was her name. She had a squint, you know. But quite attractive,
they say. When I say married, I trust I do not have to spell it out for you. I
mean, it was a bit unofficial. Er. Anyway, there was this wooden horse and after
they'd got in . . . Did I tell you about this horse? It was a horse. I'm pretty
sure it was a horse. Or maybe it was a chicken. Forget my own name next! It was
wossname's idea, the one with the limp. Yes. The limp in his leg, I mean. Did I
mention him? There'd been this fight. No, that was the other one, I think. Yes.
Anyway, this wooden pig, damn clever idea, they made it out of thing. Tip of my
tongue. Wood. But that was later, you know. The fight! Nearly forgot the fight.
Yes. Damn good fight. Everyone banging on their shields and yelling. Wossname's
armour shone like shining armour. Fight and a half, that fight. Between thingy,
not the one with the limp, the other one, wossname, had red hair. You know. Tall
fellow, talked with a lisp. Hold on, just remembered, he was from some other
island. Not him. The other one, with the limp. Didn't want to go, he said he was
mad. Of course, he was bloody mad, definitely. I mean, a wooden cow! Like
wossname said, the king, no, not that king, the other one, he saw the goat, he
said, "I fear the Ephebians, especially when they're mad enough to leave bloody
great wooden livestock on the doorstep, talk about nerve, they must think we was
born yesterday, set fire to it," and, of course, wossname had nipped in round
the back and put everyone to the sword, talk about laugh. Did I say she had a
squint? They said she was pretty, but it takes all sorts. Yes. Anyway, that's
how it happened. Now, of course, wossname - I think he was called Melycanus, had
a limp - he wanted to go home, well, you would, they'd been there for years, he
wasn't getting any younger. That's why he dreamt up the thing about the wooden
wossname. Yes. I tell a lie, Lavaelous was the one with the knee. Pretty good
fight, that fight, take it from me.'
He lapsed into self-satisfied silence.
'Pretty good fight,' he mumbled and, smiling faintly, dropped off to sleep.
Teppic was aware that his own mouth was hanging open. He shut it. Along the
table several of the diners were wiping their eyes.
'Magic,' said Xeno. 'Sheer magic. Every word a tassel on the canopy of Time.'
'It's the way he remembers every tiny detail. Pin-sharp,' murmured Ibid.
Teppic looked down the length of the table, and then nudged Xeno beside him.
'Who is everyone?' he said.
'Well, Ibid you already know. And Copolymer. Over there, that's Iesope, the
greatest teller of fables in the world. And that's Antiphon, the greatest writer
of comic plays in the world.'
'Where is Pthagonal?' said Teppic. Xeno pointed to the far end of the table,
where a glum-looking, heavy-drinking man was trying to determine the angle
between two bread rolls. 'I'll introduce you to him afterwards,' he said.
Teppic looked around at the bald heads and long white beards, which seemed to be
a badge of office. If you had a bald head and a long white beard, they seemed to
indicate, whatever lay between them must be bursting with wisdom. The only
exception was Antiphon, who looked as though he was built of pork.
They are great minds, he told himself. These are men who are trying to work out
how the world fits together, not by magic, not by religion, but just by
inserting their brains in whatever crack they can find and trying to lever it
apart.
Ibid rapped on the table for silence.
'The Tyrant has called for war on Tsort,' he said. 'Now, let us consider the
place of war in the ideal republic,' he said. 'We would require-'
'Excuse me, could you just pass me the celery?' said Iesope. 'Thank you.'
'-the ideal republic, as I was saying, based on the fundamental laws that
govern-'
'And the salt. It's just by your elbow.'
'-the fundamental laws, that is, which govern all men. Now, it is without doubt
true that war. . . could you stop that, please?'
'It's celery,' said Iesope, crunching cheerfully. 'You can't help it with
celery.'
Xeno peered suspiciously at what was on his fork.
'Here, this is squid,' he said. 'I didn't ask for squid. Who ordered squid?'
'-without doubt,' repeated Thid, raising his voice, 'without doubt, I put it to
you-
'I think this is the lamb couscous,' said Antiphon.
'Was yours the squid?'
'I asked for marida and dolmades.'
'I ordered the lamb. Just pass it along, will you?'
'I don't remember anyone asking for all this garlic bread,' said Xeno.
'Look, some of us are trying to float a philosophical concept here,' said Ibid
sarcastically. 'Don't let us interrupt you, will you?'
Someone threw a breadstick at him.
Teppic looked at what was on his fork. Seafood was unknown in the kingdom, and
what was on his fork had too many valves and suckers to be reassuring. He lifted
a boiled vine leaf with extreme care, and was sure he saw something scuttle
behind an olive.
Ah. Something else to remember, then. The Ephebians made wine out of anything
they could put in a bucket, and ate anything that couldn't climb out of one.
He pushed the food around on his plate. Some of it pushed back.
And philosophers didn't listen to one another. And they don't stick to the
point. This probably is mocracy at work.
A bread roll bounced past him. Oh, and they get over-excited.
He noticed a skinny little man sitting opposite him, chewing primly on some
anonymous tentacle. Apart from Pthagonal the geometrician, who was now gloomily
calculating the radius of his plate, he was the only person not speaking his
mind at the top of his voice. Sometimes he'd make little notes on a piece of
parchment and slip it into his toga.
Teppic leaned across. Further down the table Iesope, encouraged by occasional
olive stones and bread rolls, started a long fable about a fox, a turkey, a
goose and a wolf, who had a wager to see who could stay longest underwater with
heavy weights tied to their feet.
'Excuse me,' said Teppic, raising his voice above the din. 'Who are you?'
The little man gave him a shy look. He had extremely large ears. In a certain
light, he could have been mistaken for a very thin jug.
'I'm Endos,' he said.
'Why aren't you philosophising?'
Endos sliced a strange mollusc.
'I'm not a philosopher, actually,' he said.
'Or a humorous playwright or something?' said Teppic.
'I'm afraid not. I'm a Listener. Endos the Listener, I'm known as.'
'That's fascinating,' said Teppic automatically. 'What does that involve?'
'Listening.'
'Just listening?'
'That's what they pay me for,' said Endos. 'Sometimes I nod. Or smile. Or nod
and smile at the same time. Encouragingly, you know. They like that.'
Teppic felt he was called upon to comment at this point. 'Gosh,' he said.
Endos gave him an encouraging nod, and a smile that suggested that of all the
things Endos could be doing in the world right at this minute there was nothing
so basically riveting as listening to Teppic. It was something about his ears.
They appeared to be a vast aural black hole, begging to be filled up with words.
Teppic felt an overpowering urge to tell him all about his life and hopes and
dreams...
'I bet,' he said, 'that they pay you an awful lot of money.
Endos gave him a heartening smile.
'Have you listened to Copolymer tell his story lots of times?'
Endos nodded and smiled, although there was a faint trace of pain right behind
his eyes.
'I expect,' said Teppic, 'that your ears develop protective rough surfaces after
a while?'
Endos nodded. 'Do go on,' he urged.
Teppic glanced across at Pthagonal, who was moodily drawing right angles in his
taramasalata.
'I'd love to stay and listen to you listening to me all day,' he said. 'But
there's a man over there I'd like to see.'
'That's amazing,' said Endos, making a short note and turning his attention to a
conversation further along the table. A philosopher had averred that although
truth was beauty, beauty was not necessarily truth, and a fight was breaking
out. Endos listened carefully.[27]
Teppic wandered along the table to where Pthagonal was sitting in unrelieved
misery, and currently peering suspiciously over the crust of a pie.
Teppic looked over his shoulder.
'I think I saw something moving in there,' he said.
'Ah,' said the geometrician, taking the cork out of an amphora with his teeth.
'The mysterious young man in black from the lost kingdom.'
'I was hoping you could help me find it again?' said Teppic.
'I heard that you have some very unusual ideas in Ephebe.'
'It had to happen,' said Pthagonal. He pulled a pair of dividers from the folds
of his robe and measured the pie thoughtfully. 'Is it a constant, do you think?
It's a depressing concept.'
'Sorry?' said Teppic.
'The diameter divides into the circumference, you know. It ought to be three
times. You'd think so, wouldn't you? But does it? No. Three point one four one
and lots of other figures. There's no end to the buggers. Do you know how pissed
off that makes me?'
'I expect it makes you extremely pissed off,' said Teppic politely.
'Right. It tells me that the Creator used the wrong kind of circles. It's not
even a proper number! I mean, three point five, you could respect. Or three
point three. That'd look right.' He stared morosely at the pie.
'Excuse me, you said something about it had to happen?'
'What?' said Pthagonal, from the depths of his gloom. 'Pie!' he added.
'What had to happen?' Teppic prompted.
'You can't mess with geometry, friend. Pyramids? Dangerous things. Asking for
trouble. I mean,' Pthagonal reached unsteadily for his wine cup, 'how long did
they think they could go on building bigger and bigger pyramids for? I mean,
where did they think power comes from? I mean,' he hiccuped, 'you've been in
that place, haven't you? Ever noticed how slow it all seems to be?'
'Oh, yes,' said Teppic flatly.
'That's because the time is sucked up, see? Pyramids. So they have to flare it
off. Flarelight, they call it. They think it looks pretty! It's their time
they're burning off!'
'All I know is the air feels as though it's been boiled in a sock,' said Teppic.
'And nothing actually changes, even if it doesn't stay the same.
'Right,' said Pthagonal. 'The reason being, it's past time. They use up past
time, over and over again. The pyramids take all the new time. And if you don't
let the pyramids flare, the power build up'll-'' he paused. 'I suppose,' he went
on, 'that it'd escape along a wossname, a fracture. In space.'
'I was there before the kingdom, er, went,' said Teppic. 'I thought I saw the
big pyramid move.'
'There you are then. It's probably moved the dimensions around by ninety
degrees,' said Pthagonal, with the assurance of the truly drunk.
'You mean, so length is height and height is width?'
Pthagonal shook an unsteady finger.
'Nonono,' he said. 'So that length is height and height is breadth and breadth
is width and width is a', he burped 'A 'time. S'nother dimessnon, see? Four of
the bastards. Time's one of them. Ninety thingys to the other three. Degrees is
what I mean. Only, only, it can't exist in this world like that, so the place
had to sort of pop outside for a bit, see? Otherwise you'd have people getting
older by walking sideways. He looked sadly into the depths of his cup. 'And
every birthday you'd age another mile,' he added. Teppic looked at him aghast.
'That's time and space for you,' Pthagonal went on. 'You can twist them all over
the place if you're not careful. Three point one four one. What sort of a number
d'you call that?'
'It sounds horrible,' said Teppic.
'Damn right. Somewhere,' Pthagonal was beginning to sway on his bench,
'somewhere someone built a universe with a decent, respectable value of, of,' he
peered blankly at the table, 'of pie. Not some damn number that never comes to
an end, what kind of a'
'I meant, people getting older just by walking along!'
'I dunno, though. You could have a stroll back to where you were eighteen. Or
wander up and see what you are going to look like when you're seventy.
Travelling in width, though, that'd be the real trick.'
Pthagonal smiled vacantly and then, very slowly, keeled over into his dinner,
some of which moved out of the way.[28]
Teppic became aware that the philosophic din around him had subsided a bit. He
stared along the line until he spotted Ibid.
'It won't work,' said Ibid. 'The Tyrant won't listen to us. Nor will the people.
Anyway' he glanced at Antiphon - 'we're not all of one mind on the subject.'
'Damn Tsorteans need teaching a lesson,' said Antiphon sternly. 'Not room for
two major powers on this continent. Damn bad sports, anyway, just because we
stole their queen. Youthful high spirits, love will have its way'
Copolymer woke up.
'You've got it wrong,' he said mildly. 'The great war, that was because they
stole our queen. What was her name now, face that launched a thousand camels,
began with an A or a T or-'
'Did they?' shouted Antiphon. 'The bastards!'
'I'm reasonably certain,' said Copolymer.
Teppic sagged, and turned to Endos the Listener. He was still eating his dinner,
with the air of one who is determined to preserve his digestion.
'Endos?'
The Listener laid his knife and fork carefully on either side of his plate.
'Yes?'
'They're really all mad, aren't they?' said Teppic wearily. 'That's extremely
interesting,' said Endos. 'Do go on.' He reached shyly into his toga and brought
forth a scrap of parchment, which he pushed gently towards Teppic.
'What's this?'
'My bill,' said Endos. 'Five minutes Attentive Listening. Most of my gentlemen
have monthly accounts, but I understand you'll be leaving in the morning?'
Teppic gave up. He wandered away from the table and into the cold garden
surrounding the citadel of Ephebe. White marble statues of ancient Ephebians
doing heroic things with no clothes on protruded through the greenery and, here
and there, there were statues of Ephebian gods. It was hard to tell the
difference. Teppic knew that Dios had hard words to say about the Ephebians for
having gods that looked just like people. If the gods looked just like everyone
else, he used to say, how would people know how to treat them?
Teppic had rather liked the idea. According to legend the Ephebians' gods were
just like humans, except that they used their godhood to get up to things humans
didn't have the nerve to do. A favourite trick of Ephebian gods, he recalled,
was turning into some animal in order to gain the favours of highly-placed
Ephebian women. And one of them had reputedly turned himself into a golden
shower in pursuit of his intended. All this raised interesting questions about
everyday night life in sophisticated Ephebe.
He found Ptraci sitting on the grass under a poplar tree, feeding the tortoise.
He gave it a suspicious look, in case it was a god trying it on. It did not look
like a god. If it was a god, it was putting on an incredibly good act.
She was feeding it a lettuce leaf.
'Dear little ptortoise,' she said, and then looked up. 'Oh, it's you,' she said
flatly.
'You didn't miss much,' said Teppic, sagging on to the grass. 'They're a bunch
of maniacs. When I left they were smashing the plates.'
'That's ptraditional at the end of an Ephebian meal,' said Ptraci.
Teppic thought about this. 'Why not before?' he said.
'And then they probably dance to the sound of the bourzuki,' Ptraci added. 'I
think it's a sort of dog.'
Teppic sat with his head in his hands.
'I must say you speak Ephebian well,' he said. 'Pthank you.'
'Just a trace of an accent, though.'
'Languages is part of the ptraining,' she said. 'And my grandmother told me that
a ptrace of foreign accent is more fascinating.'
'We learned the same thing,' said Teppic. 'An assassin should always be slightly
foreign, no matter where he is. I'm good at that part,' he added bitterly.
She began to massage his neck.
'I went down to the harbour,' she said. 'There's those things like big rafts,
you know, camels of the sea'
'Ships,' said Teppic.
'And they go everywhere. We could go anywhere we want. The world is our pthing
with pearls in it, if we like.'
Teppic told her about Pthagonal's theory. She didn't seem surprised.
'Like an old pond where no new water comes in,' she observed. 'So everyone goes
round and round in the same old puddle. All the ptime you live has been lived
already. It must be like other people's bathwater.'
'I'm going to go back.'
Her fingers stopped their skilled kneading of his muscles.
'We could go anywhere,' she repeated. 'We've got ptrades, we could sell that
camel. You could show me that Ankh-Morpork place. It sounds interesting.'
Teppic wondered what effect Ankh-Morpork would have on the girl. Then he
wondered what effect she would have on the city. She was definitely flowering.
Back in the Old Kingdom she'd never apparently had any original thoughts beyond
the choice of the next grape to peel, but since she was outside she seemed to
have changed. Her jaw hadn't changed, it was still quite small and, he had to
admit, very pretty. But somehow it was more noticeable. She used to look at the
ground when she spoke to him. She still didn't always look at him when she spoke
to him, but now it was because she was thinking about something else.
He found he kept wanting to say, politely, without stressing it in any way, just
as a very gentle reminder, that he was king. But he had a feeling that she'd say
she hadn't heard, and would he please repeat it, and if she looked at him he'd
never be able to say it twice.
'You could go,' he said. 'You'd get on well. I could give you a few names and
addresses.'
'And what would you do?'
'I dread to think what's going on back home,' said Teppic. 'I ought to do
something.'
'You can't. Why ptry? Even if you didn't want to be an assassin there's lots of
pthings you could do. And you said the man said it's not a place people could
get into any more. I hate pyramids.'
'Surely there's people there you care about?'
Ptraci shrugged. 'If they're dead there's nothing I can do about it,' she said.
'And if they're alive, there's nothing I 'can do about it. So I shan't.'
Teppic stared at her in a species of horrified admiration. It was a beautiful
summary of things as they were. He just couldn't bring himself to think that
way. His body had been away for seven years but his blood had been in the
kingdom for a thousand times longer. Certainly he'd wanted to leave it behind,
but that was the whole point. It would have been there. Even if he'd avoided it
for the rest of his life, it would have still been a sort of anchor.
'I feel so wretched about it,' he repeated. 'I'm sorry. That's all there is to
it. Even to go back for five minutes, just to say, well, that I'm not coming
back. That'd be enough. It's probably all my fault.'
'But there isn't a way back! You'll just hang around sadly, like those deposed
kings you ptold me about. You know, with pthreadbare cloaks and always begging
for their food in a high-class way. There's nothing more useless than a king
without a kingdom, you said. Just think about it.'
They wandered through the sunset streets of the city, and towards the harbour.
All streets in the city led towards the harbour.
Someone was just putting a torch to the lighthouse, which was one of the More
Than Seven Wonders of the World and had been built to a design by Pthagonal
using the Golden Rule and the Five Aesthetic Principles. Unfortunately it had
then been built in the wrong place because putting it in the right place would
have spoiled the look of the harbour, but it was generally agreed by mariners to
be a very beautiful lighthouse and something to look at while they were waiting
to be towed off the rocks.
The harbour below it was thronged with ships. Teppic and Ptraci picked their way
past crates and bundles until they reached the long curved guard wall, harbour
calm on one side, choppy with waves on the other. Above them the lighthouse
flared and sparked.
Those boats would be going to places he'd only ever heard of, he knew. The
Ephebians were great traders. He could go back to Ankh and get his diploma, and
then the world would indeed be the mollusc of his choice and he had any amount
of knives to open it with.
Ptraci put her hand in his.
And there'd be none of this marrying relatives business. The months in
Djelibeybi already seemed like a dream, one of those circular dreams that you
never quite seem able to shake off and which make insomnia an attractive
prospect. Whereas here was a future, unrolling in front of him like a carpet.
What a chap needed at a time like this was a sign, some sort of book of
instructions. The trouble with life was that you didn't get a chance to practise
before doing it for real. You only-
'Good grief? It's Teppic, isn't it?' The voice was addressing him from ankle
height. A head appeared over the stone of the jetty, quickly followed by its
body. An extremely richly dressed body, one on which no expense had been spared
in the way of gems, furs, silks and laces, provided that all of them, every
single one, was black.
It was Chidder.

'What's it doing now?' said Ptaclusp.
His son poked his head cautiously over the ruins of a pillar and watched Hat,
the Vulture-Headed God.
'It's sniffing around,' he said. 'I think it likes the statue. Honestly, dad,
why did you have to go and buy a thing like that?'
'It was in a job lot,' said Ptaclusp. 'Anyway, I thought it would be a popular
line.'
'With who?'
'Well, he likes it.'
Ptaclusp IIb risked another squint at the angular monstrosity that was still
hopping around the ruins.
'Tell him he can have it if he goes away,' he suggested.
'Tell him he can have it at cost.'
Ptaclusp winced. 'At a discount,' he said. 'A special cut rate for our
supernatural customers.
He stared up at the sky. From their hiding place in the ruins of the
construction camp, with the Great Pyramid still humming like a powerhouse behind
them, they'd had an excellent view of the arrival of the gods. At first he'd
viewed them with a certain amount of equanimity. Gods would be good customers,
they always wanted temples and statues, he could deal directly, cut out the
middle man.
And then it had occurred to him that a god, when he was unhappy about the
product, as it might be, maybe the plasterwork wasn't exactly as per spec, or
perhaps a corner of the temple was a bit low on account of unexpected quicksand,
a god didn't just come around demanding in a loud voice to see the manager. No.
A god knew exactly where you were, and got to the point. Also, gods were
notoriously bad payers. So were humans, of course, but they didn't actually
expect you to die before they settled the account.
His gaze turned to his other son, a painted silhouette against the statue, his
mouth a frozen O of astonishment, and Ptaclusp reached a decision.
'I've just about had it with pyramids,' he said. 'Remind me, lad. If we ever get
out of here, no more pyramids. We've got set in our ways. Time to branch out, I
reckon.'
'That's what I've been telling you for ages, dad!' said IIb. 'I've told you, a
couple of decent aqueducts will make a tremendous-'
'Yes, yes, I remember,' said Ptaclusp. 'Yes. Aqueducts. All those arches and
things. Fine. Only I can't remember where you said you have to put the coffin
in.'
'Dad!'
'Don't mind me, lad. I think I'm going mad.'
I couldn't have seen a mummy and two men over there, carrying sledgehammers.

It was, indeed, Chidder.
And Chidder had a boat.
Teppic knew that further along the coast the Seriph of Al-Khali lived in the
fabulous palace of the Rhoxie, which was said to have been built in one night by
a genie and was famed in myth and legend for its splendour.[29]
The Unnamed was the Rhoxie afloat, but more so. Its designer had a gilt complex,
and had tried every trick with gold paint, curly pillars and expensive drapes to
make it look less like a ship and more like a boudoir that had collided with a
highly suspicious type of theatre.
In fact, you needed an assassin's eyes for hidden detail to notice how
innocently the gaudiness concealed the sleekness of the hull and the fact, even
when you added the cabin space and the holds together, that there still seemed
to be a lot of capacity unaccounted for. The water around what Ptraci called the
pointed end was strangely rippled, but it would be totally ridiculous to suspect
such an obvious merchantman of having a concealed ramming spike underwater, or
that a mere five minutes' work with an axe would turn this wallowing Alcdzar
into something that could run away from nearly everything else afloat and make
the few that could catch up seriously regret it.
'Very impressive,' said Teppic.
'It's all show, really,' said Chidder.
'Yes. I can see that.'
'I mean, we're poor traders.'
Teppic nodded. 'The usual phrase is "poor but honest traders",' he said.
Chidder smiled a merchant's smile. 'Oh, I think we'll stick on "poor" at the
moment. How the hell are you, anyway? Last we heard you were going off to be
king of some place no-one's ever heard of. And who is this lovely young lady?'
'Her name' Teppic began.
'Ptraci,' said Ptraci.
'She's a hand-' Teppic began.
'She must surely be a royal princess,' said Chidder smoothly. 'And it would give
me the greatest pleasure if she, if indeed both of you, would dine with me
tonight. Humble sailor's fare, I'm afraid, but we muddle along, we muddle
along.'
'Not Ephebian, is it?' said Teppic.
'Ship's biscuit, salt beef, that sort of thing,' said Chidder, without taking
his eyes off Ptraci. They hadn't left her since she came on board.
Then he laughed. It was the old familiar Chidder laugh, not exactly without
humour, but clearly well under the control of its owner's higher brain centres.
'What an astonishing coincidence,' he said. 'And us due to sail at dawn, too.
Can I offer you a change of clothing? You both look somewhat, er,
travel-stained.'
'Rough sailor clothing, I expect,' said Teppic. 'As befits a humble merchant,
correct me if I'm wrong?'
In fact Teppic was shown to a small cabin as exquisitely and carefully furnished
as a jewelled egg, where there was laid upon the bed as fine an assortment of
clothing as could be found anywhere on the Circle Sea. True, it all appeared
second-hand, but carefully laundered and expertly stitched so that the sword
cuts hardly showed at all. He gazed thoughtfully at the hooks on the wall, and
the faint patching on the wood which hinted that various things had once been
hung there and hastily removed.
He stepped out into the narrow corridor, and met Ptraci. She'd chosen a red
court dress such as had been the fashion in Ankh-Morpork ten years previously,
with puffed sleeves and vast concealed underpinnings and ruffs the size of
millstones.
Teppic learned something new, which was that attractive women dressed in a few
strips of gauze and a few yards of silk can actually look far more desirable
when fully clad from neck to ankle. She gave an experimental twirl.
'There are any amount of things like this in there,' she said. 'Is this how
women dress in Ankh-Morpork? It's like wearing a house. It doesn't half make you
sweaty.'
'Look, about Chidder,' said Teppic urgently. 'I mean, he's a good fellow and
everything, but-'
'He's very kind, isn't he,' she agreed.
'Well. Yes. He is,' Teppic admitted, hopelessly. 'He's an old friend.'
'That's nice.'
One of the crew materialised at the end of the corridor and bowed them into the
state cabin, his air of old retainership marred only by the criss-cross pattern
of scars on his head and some tattoos that made the pictures in The Shuttered
Palace look like illustrations in a DIY shelving manual. The things he could
make them do by flexing his biceps could keep entire dockside taverns fascinated
for hours, and he was not aware that the worst moment of his entire life was
only a few minutes away.
'This is all very pleasant,' said Chidder, pouring some wine. He nodded at the
tattooed man. 'You may serve the soup, Alfonz,' he added.
'Look, Chiddy, you're not a pirate, are you?' said Teppic, desperately.
'Is that what's been worrying you?' Chidder grinned his lazy grin.
It wasn't everything that Teppic had been worrying about, but it had been
jockeying for top position. He nodded.
'No, we're not. We just prefer to, er, avoid paperwork wherever possible. You
know? We don't like people to have all the worry of having to know everything we
do.'
'Only there's all the clothes-'
'Ah. We get attacked by pirates a fair amount. That's why father had the Unnamed
built. It always surprises them. And the whole thing is morally sound. We get
their ship, their booty, and any prisoners they may have get rescued and given a
ride home at competitive rates.'
'What do you do with the pirates?'
Chidder glanced at Alfonz.
'That depends on future employment prospects,' he said. 'Father always says that
a man down on his luck should be offered a helping hand. On terms, that is.
How's the king business?'
Teppic told him. Chidder listened intently, swilling the wine around in his
glass.
'So that's it,' he said at last. 'We heard there was going to be a war. That's
why we're sailing tonight.'
'I don't blame you,' said Teppic.
'No, I mean to get the trade organised. With both sides, naturally, because
we're strictly impartial. The weapons produced on this continent are really
quite shocking. Down-right dangerous. You should come with us, too. You're a
very valuable person.'
'Never felt more valueless than right now,' said Teppic despondently.
Chidder looked at him in amazement.
'But you're a king!' he said.
'Well, yes, but-'
'Of a country which technically still exists, but isn't actually reachable by
mortal man?'
'Sadly so.'
'And you can pass laws about, well, currency and taxation, yes?'
'I suppose so, but-'
'And you don't think you're valuable? Good grief, Tep, our accountants can
probably think up fifty different ways to . . . well, my hands go damp just to
think about it. Father will probably ask to move our head office there, for a
start.'
'Chidder, I explained. You know it. No-one can get in,' said Teppic.
'That doesn't matter.'
'Doesn't matter?'
'No, because we'll just make Ankh our main branch office and pay our taxes in
wherever the place is. All we need is an official address in, I don't know, the
Avenue of the Pyramids or something. Take my tip and don't give in on anything
until father gives you a seat on the board. You're royal, anyway, that's always
impressive . .
Chidder chattered on. Teppic felt his clothes growing hotter. So this was it.
You lost your kingdom, and then it was worth more because it was a tax haven,
and you took a seat on the board, whatever that was, and that made it all right.

Ptraci defused the situation by grabbing Alfonz's arm as he was serving the
pheasant.
'The Congress of The Friendly Dog and the Two Small Biscuits!' she exclaimed,
examining the intricate tattoo. 'You hardly ever see that these days. Isn't it
well done? You can even make out the yoghurt.'
Alfonz froze, and then blushed. Watching the glow spread across the great
scarred head was like watching sunrise over a mountain range.
'What's the one on your other arm?'
Alfonz, who looked as though his past jobs had included being a battering ram,
murmured something and, very shyly, showed her his forearm.
''S'not really suitable for ladies,' he whispered.
Ptraci brushed aside the wiry hair like a keen explorer, while Chidder stared at
her with his mouth hanging open.
'Oh, I know that one,' she said dismissively. 'That's out of 130 Days of
Pseudopolis. It's physically impossible.' She let go of the arm, and turned back
to her meal. After a moment she looked up at Teppic and Chidder.
'Don't mind me,' she said brightly. 'Do go on.
'Alfonz, please go and put a proper shirt on,' said Chidder, hoarsely.
Alfonz backed away, staring at his arm.
'Er. What was I, er, saying?' said Chidder. 'Sorry. Lost the thread. Er. Have
some more wine, Tep?'
Ptraci didn't just derail the train of thought, she ripped up the rails, burned
the stations and melted the bridges for scrap. And so the dinner trailed off
into beef pie, fresh peaches, crystallised sea urchins and desultory small talk
about the good old days at the Guild. They had been three months ago. It seemed
like a lifetime. Three months in the Old Kingdom was a lifetime.
After some time Ptraci yawned and went to her cabin, leaving the two of them
alone with a fresh bottle of wine. Chidder watched her go in awed silence.
'Are there many like her back at your place?' he said.
'I don't know,' Teppic admitted. 'There could be. Usually they lie around the
place peeling grapes or waving fans.'
'She's amazing. She'll take them by storm in Ankh, you know. With a figure like
that and a mind like . . .' He hesitated. 'Is she . . . ? I mean, are you two .
. .
'No,' said Teppic.
'She's very attractive.'
'Yes,' said Teppic.
'A sort of cross between a temple dancer and a bandsaw.' They took their glasses
and went up on deck, where a few lights from the city paled against the
brilliance of the stars. The water was flat calm, almost oily.
Teppic's head was beginning to spin slowly. The desert, the sun, two gloss coats
of Ephebian retsina on his stomach lining and a bottle of wine were getting
together to beat up his synapses.
'I mus' say,' he managed, leaning on the rail, 'you're doing all right for
yourself.'
'It's okay,' said Chidder. 'Commerce is quite interesting. Building up markets,
you know. The cut and thrust of competition in the privateering sector. You
ought to come in with us, boy. It's where the future lies, my father says. Not
with wizards and kings, but with enterprising people who can afford to hire
them. No offence intended, you understand.'
'We're all that's left,' said Teppic to his wine glass. 'Out of the whole
kingdom. Me, her, and a camel that smells like an old carpet. An ancient
kingdom, lost.'
'Good job it wasn't a new one,' said Chidder. 'At least people got some wear out
of it.'
'You don't know what it's like,' said Teppic. 'It's like a whole great pyramid.
But upside down, you understand? All that history, all those ancestors, all the
people, all funnelling down to me. Right at the bottom.'
He slumped on to a coil of rope as Chidder passed the bottle back and said, 'It
makes you think, doesn't it? There's all these lost cities and kingdoms around.
Like Ee, in the Great Nef. Whole countries, just gone. Just out there somewhere.
Maybe people started mucking about with geometry, what do you say?'
Teppic snored.
After some moments Chidder swayed forward, dropped the empty bottle over the
side, it went plunk - and for a few seconds a stream of bubbles disturbed the
flat calm - and staggered off to bed.

Teppic dreamed.
And in his dream he was standing on a high place, but unsteadily, because he was
balancing on the shoulders of his father and mother, and below them he could
make out his grandparents, and below them his ancestors stretching away and out
in a vast, all right, a vast pyramid of humanity whose base was lost in clouds.
He could hear the murmur of shouted orders and instructions floating up to him.
If you do nothing, we shall never have been.
'This is just a dream,' he said, and stepped out of it into a palace where a
small, dark man in a loincloth was sitting on a stone bench, eating figs.
'Of course it's a dream,' he said. 'The world is the dream of the Creator. It's
all dreams, different kinds of dreams. They're supposed to tell you things.
Like: don't eat lobster last thing at night. Stuff like that. Have you had the
one about the seven cows?'
'Yes,' said Teppic, looking around. He'd dreamed quite good architecture. 'One
of them was playing a trombone.'
'It was smoking a cigar in my day. Well-known ancestral dream, that dream.'
'What does it mean?'
The little man picked a seed from between his teeth.
'Search me,' he said. 'I'd give my right arm to find out. I don't think we've
met, by the way. I'm Khuft. I founded this kingdom. You dream a good fig.'
'I'm dreaming you, too?'
'Damn right. I had a vocabulary of eight hundred words, do you think I'd really
be talking like this? If you're expecting a bit of helpful ancestral advice,
forget it. This is a dream. I can't tell you anything you don't know yourself.'
'You're the founder?'
'That's me.'
'I . . . thought you'd be different,' said Teppic.
'How d'you mean?'
'Well . . . on the statue . .
Khuft waved a hand impatiently.
'That's just public relations,' he said. 'I mean, look at me. Do I look
patriarchal?'
Teppic gave him a critical appraisal. 'Not in that loincloth,' he admitted.
'It's a bit, well, ragged.'
'It's got years of wear left in it,' said Khuft.
'Still, I expect it's all you could grab when you were fleeing from
persecution,' said Teppic, anxious to show an understanding nature.
Khuft took another fig and give him a lopsided look. 'How's that again?'
'You were being persecuted,' said Teppic. 'That's why you fled into the desert.'

'Oh, yes. You're right. Damn right. I was being persecuted for my beliefs.'
'That's terrible,' said Teppic.
Khuft spat. 'Damn right. I believed people wouldn't notice I'd sold them camels
with plaster teeth until I was well out of town.'
It took a little while for this to sink in, but it managed it with all the
aplomb of a concrete block in a quicksand.
'You're a criminal?' said Teppic.
'Well, criminal's a dirty word, know what I mean?' said the little ancestor.
'I'd prefer entrepreneur. I was ahead of my time, that's my trouble.'
'And you were running away?' said Teppic weakly.
'It wouldn't,' said Khuft, 'have been a good idea to hang about.'
'"And Khuft the camel herder became lost in the Desert, and there opened before
him, as a Gift from the Gods, a Valley flowing with Milk and Honey",' quoted
Teppic, in a hollow voice. He added, 'I used to think it must have been awfully
sticky.'
'There I was, dying of thirst, all the camels kicking up a din, yelling for
water, next minute - whoosh - a bloody great river valley, reed beds, hippos,
the whole thing. Out of nowhere. I nearly got knocked down in the stampede.'
'No!' said Teppic. 'It wasn't like that! The gods of the valley took pity on you
and showed you the way in, didn't they?' He shut up, surprised at the tones of
pleading in his own voice.
Khuft sneered. 'Oh, yes? And I just happened to stumble across a hundred miles
of river in the middle of the desert that everyone else had missed. Easy thing
to miss, a hundred miles of river valley in the middle of a desert, isn't it?
Not that I was going to look a gift camel in the mouth, you understand, I went
and brought my family and the rest of the lads in soon enough. Never looked
back.'
'One minute it wasn't there, the next minute it was?' said Teppic.
'Right enough. Hard to believe, isn't it?'
'No,' said Teppic. 'No. Not really.' Khuft poked him with a wrinkled finger. 'I
always reckoned it was the camels that did it,' he said. 'I always thought they
sort of called it into place, like it was sort of potentially there but not
quite, and it needed just that little bit of effort to make it real. Funny
things, camels.'
'I know.'
'Odder than gods. Something the matter?'
'Sorry,' said Teppic, 'it's just that this is all a bit of a shock. I mean, I
thought we were really royal. I mean, we're more royal than anyone.
Khuft picked a fig seed from between two blackened stumps which, because they
were in his mouth, probably had to be called his teeth. Then he spat.
'That's up to you,' he said, and vanished.
Teppic walked through the necropolis, the pyramids a saw-edged skyline against
the night. The sky was the arched body of a woman, and the gods stood around the
horizon. They didn't look like the gods that had been painted on the walls for
thousands of years. They looked worse. They looked older than Time. After all,
the gods hardly ever meddled in the affairs of men. But other things were
proverbial for it.
'What can I do? I'm only human,' he said aloud.
Someone said, Not all of you.

Teppic awoke, to the screaming of seagulls.
Alfonz, who was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and the expression of one who never
means to take it off again, ever, was helping several other men unfurl one of
Unnamed's sails. He looked down at Teppic in his bed of rope and gave him a nod.

They were moving. Teppic sat up, and saw the dock-side of Ephebe slipping
silently away in the grey morning light.
He stood up unsteadily, groaned, clutched at his head, took a run and dived over
the rail.

Heme Krona, owner of the Camels-R-Us livery stable, walked slowly around You
Bastard, humming. He examined the camel's knees. He gave one of its feet an
experimental kick. In a swift movement that took You Bastard completely by
surprise he jerked open the beast's mouth and examined his great yellow teeth,
and then jumped away.
He took a plank of wood from a heap in the corner, dipped a brush in a pot of
black paint, and after a moment's thought carefully wrote, ONE OWNER.
After some further consideration he added, LO MILEAGE. He was just brushing in
GOOD RUNER when Teppic staggered in and leaned, panting, against the doorframe.
Pools of water formed around his feet.
'I've come for my camel,' he said.
Krona sighed.
'Last night you said you'd be back in an hour,' he said. 'I'm going to have to
charge you for a whole day's livery, right? Plus I gave him a rub down and did
his feet, the full service. That'll be five cercs, okay emir?'
'Ah.' Teppic patted his pocket.
'Look,' he said. 'I left home in a bit of a hurry, you see. I don't seem to have
any cash on me.'
'Fair enough, emir.' Krona turned back to his board. 'How do you spell YEARS
WARENTY?'
'I will definitely have the money sent to you,' said Teppic. Krona gave him the
withering smile of one who has seen it all - asses with bodywork re-haired,
elephants with plaster tusks, camels with false humps glued on - and knows the
festering depths of the human soul when it gets down to business.
'Pull the other one, rajah,' he said. 'It has got bells on.'
Teppic fumbled in his tunic.
'I could give you this valuable knife,' he said.
Krona gave it a passing glance, and sniffed.
'Sorry, emir. No can do. No pay, no camel.'
'I could give it to you point first,' said Teppic desperately, knowing that the
mere threat would get him expelled from the Guild. He was also aware that as a
threat it wasn't very good. Threats weren't on the syllabus at the Guild school.

Whereas Krona had, sitting on straw bales at the back of the stables, a couple
of large men who were just beginning to take an interest in the proceedings.
They looked like Alfonz's older brothers.
Every vehicle depot of any description anywhere in the multiverse has them.
They're never exactly grooms or mechanics or customers or staff. Their function
is always unclear. They chew straws or smoke cigarettes in a surreptitious
fashion. If there are such things as newspapers around, they read them, or at
least look at the pictures.
They started to watch Teppic closely. One of them picked up a couple of bricks
and began to toss them up and down.
'You're a young lad, I can see that,' said Krona, kindly. 'You're just starting
out in life, emir. You don't want trouble.' He stepped forward.
You Bastard's huge shaggy head turned to look at him. In the depths of his brain
columns of little numbers whirred upwards again.
'Look, I'm sorry, but I've got to have my camel back,' said Teppic. 'It's life
and death!'
Krona waved a hand at the two extraneous men.
You Bastard kicked him. You Bastard had very concise ideas about people putting
their hands in his mouth. Besides, he'd seen the bricks, and every camel knew
what two bricks added up to. It was a good kick, toes well spread, powerful and
deceptively slow. It picked Krona up and delivered him neatly into a steaming
heap of Augean stable sweepings.
Teppic ran, kicked away from the wall, grabbed You Bastard's dusty coat and
landed heavily on his neck.
'I'm very sorry,' he said, to such of Krona as was visible. 'I really will have
some money sent to you.'
You Bastard, at this point, was waltzing round and round in a circle. Krona's
companions stayed well back as feet like plates whirred through the air.
Teppic leaned forward and hissed into one madly-waving ear.
'We're going home,' he said.

They had chosen the first pyramid at random. The king peered at the cartouche on
the door.
'"Blessed is Queen Far-re-ptah",' read Dil dutifully, "Ruler of the Skies, Lord
of the Djel, Master of-"
'Grandma Pooney,' said the king. 'She'll do.' He looked at their startled faces.
'That's what I used to call her when I was a little boy. I couldn't pronounce
Far-re-ptah, you see. Well, go on then. Stop gawking. Break the door down.'
Gern hefted the hammer uncertainly.
'It's a pyramid, master,' he said, appealing to Dil. 'You're not supposed to
open them.'
'What do you suggest, lad? We stick a tableknife in the slot and wiggle it
about?' said the king.
'Do it, Gern,' said Dil. 'It will be all right.'
Gern shrugged, spat on his hands which were, in fact, quite damp enough with the
sweat of terror, and swung.
'Again,' said the king.
The great slab boomed as the hammer hit it, but it was granite, and held. A few
flakes of mortar floated down, and then the echoes came back, shunting back and
forth along the dead avenues of the necropolis.
'Again.'
Gern's biceps moved like turtles in grease.
This time there was an answering boom, such as might be caused by a heavy lid
crashing to the ground, far away.
They stood in silence, listening to a slow shuffling noise from inside the
pyramid.
'Shall I hit it again, sire?' said Gern. They both waved him into silence.
The shuffling grew closer.
Then the stone moved. It stuck once or twice, but never the less it moved,
slowly, pivoting on one side so that a crack of dark shadow appeared. Dil could
just make out a darker shape in the blackness.
'Yes?' it said.
'It's me, Grandma,' said the king.
The shadow stood motionless.
'What, young Pootle?' it said, suspiciously.
The king avoided Dil's face.
'That's right, Grandma. We've come to let you out.'
'Who're these men?' said the shadow petulantly. 'I've got nothing, young man,'
she said to Gern. 'I don't keep any money in the pyramid and you can put that
weapon away, it doesn't frighten me.'
'They're servants, Grandma,' said the king.
'Have they got any identification?' muttered the old lady.
'I'm identifying them, Grandma. We've come to let you out.'
'I was hammering hours,' said the late queen, emerging into the sunlight. She
looked exactly like the king, except that the mummy wrappings were greyer and
dusty. 'I had to go and have a lie down, come the finish. No-one cares about you
when you're dead. Where're we going?'
'To let the others out,' said the king.
'Damn good idea.' The old queen lurched into step behind him.
'So this is the netherworld, is it?' she said. 'Not much of an improvement.' She
elbowed Gern sharply. 'You dead too, young man?'
'No, ma'am,' said Gern, in the shaky brave tones of someone on a tightrope over
the chasms of madness.
'It's not worth it. Be told.'
'Yes, ma'am.'
The king shuffled across the ancient pavings to the next pyramid.
'I know this one,' said the queen. 'It was here in my day. King Ashk-ur-men-tep.
Third Empire. What's the hammer for, young man?'
'Please, ma'am, I have to hammer on the door, ma'am,' said Gern.
'You don't have to knock. He's always in.'
'My assistant means to smash the seals, ma'am,' said Dil, anxious to please.
'Who're you?' the queen demanded.
'My name is Dil, O queen. Master embalmer.'
'Oh, you are, are you? I've got some stitching wants seeing to.'
'It will be an honour and a privilege, O queen,' said Dil.
'Yes. It will,' she said, and turned creakily to Gern. 'Hammer away, young man!'
she said.
Spurred by this, Gern brought the hammer round in a long, fast arc. It passed in
front of Dil's nose making a noise like a partridge and smashed the seal into
pieces.
What emerged, when the dust had settled, was not dressed in the height of
fashion. The bandages were brown and mouldering and, Dil noticed with
professional concern, already beginning to go at the elbows. When it spoke, it
was like the opening of ancient caskets.
'I woket up,' it said. 'And theyre was noe light. Is thys the netherworld?'
'It would appear not,' said the queen.
'Thys is all?'
'Hardly worth the trouble of dying, was it?' said the queen. The ancient king
nodded, but gently, as though he was afraid his head would fall off.
'Somethyng,' he said, 'must be done.'
He turned to look at the Great Pyramid, and pointed with what had once been an
arm.
'Who slepes there?' he said.
'It's mine, actually,' said Teppicymon, lurching forward. 'I don't think we've
met, I haven't been interred as yet, my son built it for me. It was against my
better judgement, believe me.'
'It ys a dretful thyng,' said the ancient king. 'I felt its building. Even in
the sleep of deathe I felt it. It is big enough to interr the worlde.'
'I wanted to be buried at sea,' said Teppicymon. 'I hate pyramids.'
'You do not,' said Ashk-ur-men-tep.
'Excuse me, but I do,' said the king, politely.
'But you do not. What you feel nowe is myld dislike. When you have lain in one
for a thousand yeares,' said the ancient one, 'then you will begin to know the
meaning of hate.'
Teppicymon shuddered.
'The sea,' he said. 'That's the place. You just dissolve away.
They set off towards the next pyramid. Gern led the way, his face a picture,
possibly one painted late at night by an artist who got his inspiration on
prescription. Dil followed. He held his chest high. He'd always hoped to make
his way in the world and here he was now, walking with kings.
Well. Lurching with kings.

It was another nice day in the high desert. It was always a nice day, if by nice
you meant an air temperature like an oven and sand you could roast chestnuts on.

You Bastard ran fast, mainly to keep his feet off the ground for as long as
possible. For a moment as they staggered up the hills outside the olive-tree'd,
field-patchworked oasis around Ephebe, Teppic thought he saw the Unnamed as a
tiny speck on the azure sea. But it might have been just a gleam on a wave.
Then he was over the crest, into a world of yellow and umber. For a while
scrubby trees held on against the sand, but the sand won and marched
triumphantly onwards, dune after dune.
The desert was not only hot, it was quiet. There were no birds, none of the
susurration of organic creatures busily being alive. At night there might have
been the whine of insects, but they were deep under the sand against the scorch
of day, and the yellow sky and yellow sand became an anechoic chamber in which
You Bastard's breath sounded like a steam-engine.
Teppic had learned many things since he first went forth from the Old Kingdom,
and he was about to learn one more. All authorities agree that when crossing the
scorching desert it is a good idea to wear a hat.
You Bastard settled into the shambling trot that a prime racing camel can keep
up for hours.
After a couple of miles Teppic saw a column of dust behind the next dune.
Eventually they came up behind the main body of the Ephebian army, swinging
along around half-a-dozen battle elephants, their helmet plumes waving in the
oven breeze. They cheered on general principles as Teppic went past.
Battle elephants! Teppic groaned. Tsort went in for battle elephants, too.
Battle elephants were the fashion lately. They weren't much good for anything
except trampling on their own troops when they inevitably panicked, so the
military minds on both sides had responded by breeding bigger elephants.
Elephants were impressive.
For some reason, many of these elephants were towing great carts full of timber.

He jogged onwards as the sun wound higher and, and this was unusual, blue and
purple dots began to pinwheel gently across the horizon.
Another strange thing was happening. The camel seemed to be trotting across the
sky. Perhaps this had something to do with the ringing noise in his ears.
Should he stop? But then the camel might fall off.
It was long past noon when You Bastard staggered into the baking shade of the
limestone outcrop which had once marked the edge of the valley, and collapsed
very slowly into the sand. Teppic rolled off.
A detachment of Ephebians were staring across the narrow space towards a very
similar number of Tsorteans on the other side. Occasionally, for the look of the
thing, one of them waved a spear.
When Teppic opened his eyes it was to see the fearsome bronze masks of several
Ephebian soldiers peering down at him. Their metal mouths were locked in sneers
of terrible disdain. Their shining eyebrows were twisted in mortal anger.
One of them said, 'He's coming round, sarge.'
A metal face like the anger of the elements came closer, filling Teppic's
vision.
'We've been out without our hat, haven't we, sonny boy,' it said, in a cheery
voice that echoed oddly inside the metal. 'In a hurry to get to grips with the
enemy, were we?'
The sky wheeled around Teppic, but a thought bobbed into the frying pan of his
mind, seized control of his vocal chords and croaked: 'The camel!'
'You ought to be put away, treating it like that,' said the sergeant, waggling a
finger at him. 'Never seen one in such a state.'
'Don't let it have a drink!' Teppic sat bolt upright, great gongs clanging and
hot, heavy fireworks going off inside his skull. The helmeted heads turned
towards one another.
'Gods, he must have something really terrible against camels,' said one of them.
Teppic staggered upright and lurched across the sand to You Bastard, who was
trying to work out the complex equation which would allow him to get to his
feet. His tongue was hanging out, and he was not feeling well.
A camel in distress isn't a shy creature. It doesn't hang around in bars,
nursing a solitary drink. It doesn't phone up old friends and sob at them. It
doesn't mope, or write long soulful poems about Life and how dreadful it is when
seen from a bedsitter. It doesn't know what angst is.
All a camel has got is a pair of industrial-strength lungs and a voice like a
herd of donkeys being chainsawed.
Teppic advanced through the blaring. You Bastard reared his head and turned it
this way and that, triangulating. His eyes rolled madly as he did the camel
trick of apparently looking at Teppic with his nostrils.
He spat.
He tried to spit.
Teppic grabbed his halter and pulled on it.
'Come on, you bastard,' he said. 'There's water. You can smell it. All you have
to do is work out how to get there!'
He turned to the assembled soldiers. They were staring at him with expressions
of amazement, apart from those who hadn't removed their helmets and who were
staring at him with expressions of metallic ferocity.
Teppic snatched a water skin from one of them, pulled out the stopper and tipped
it on to the ground in front of the camel's twitching nose.
'There's a river here,' he hissed. 'You know where it is, all you've got to do
is go there!'
The soldiers looked around nervously. So did several Tsorteans, who had wandered
up to see what was going on.
You Bastard got to his feet, knees trembling, and started to spin around in a
circle. Teppic clung on.
. . . let d equal 4, thought You Bastard desperately. Let a.d equal 90. Let
not-d equal 45 . . .
'I need a stick!' shouted Teppic, as he was whirled past the sergeant. 'They
never understand anything unless you hit them with a stick, it's like
punctuation to a camel!'
'Is a sword any good?'
'No!'
The sergeant hesitated, and then passed Teppic his spear. He grabbed it
point-end first, fought for balance, and then brought it smartly across the
camel's flank, raising a cloud of dust and hair.
You Bastard stopped. His ears turned like radar aerials. He stared at the rock
wall, rolling his eyes. Then, as Teppic grabbed a handful of hair and pulled
himself up, the camel started to trot.
. . . Think fractals . . .
'Ere, you're going to run straight-' the sergeant began.
There was silence. It went on for a long time.
The sergeant shifted uneasily. Then he looked across the rocks to the Tsorteans,
and caught the eye of their leader. With the unspoken understanding that is
shared by centurions and sergeant-majors everywhere, they walked towards one
another along the length of the rocks and stopped by the barely visible crack in
the cliff.
The Tsortean sergeant ran his hand over it.
'You'd think there'd be some, you know, camel hairs or something,' he said.
'Or blood,' said the Ephebian.
'I reckon it's one of them unexplainable phenomena.'
'Oh. That's all right, then.'
The two men stared at the stone for a while.
'Like a mirage,' said the Tsortean, helpfully.
'One of them things, yes.'
'I thought I heard a seagull, too.'
'Daft, isn't it. You don't get them out here.'
The Tsortean coughed politely, and stared back at his men.
Then he leaned closer.
'The rest of your people will be along directly, I expect,' he said.
The Ephebian stepped a bit closer and when he spoke, it was out of the corner of
his mouth while his eyes apparently remained fully occupied by looking at the
rocks.
'That's right,' he said. 'And yours too, may I ask?'
'Yes. I expect we'll have to massacre you if ours get here first.'
'Likewise, I shouldn't wonder. Still, can't be helped.'
'One of those things, really,' agreed the Tsortean. The other man nodded. 'Funny
old world, when you come to think about it.'
'You've put your finger on it, all right.' The sergeant loosened his breastplate
a bit, glad to be out of the sun. 'Rations okay on your side?' he said.
'Oh, you know. Mustn't grumble.'
'Like us, really.'
''Cos if you do grumble, they get even worse.'
'Just like ours. Here, you haven't got any figs on your side, have you? I could
just do with a fig.'
'Sorry.'
'Just thought I'd ask.'
'Got plenty of dates, if they're any good to you.'
'We're okay on dates, thanks.'
'Sorry.'
The two men stood awhile, lost in their own thoughts. Then the Ephebian put on
his helmet again, and the Tsortean adjusted his belt.
'Right, then.'
'Right, then.'
They squared their shoulders, stuck out their chins, and marched away. A moment
later they turned about smartly and, exchanging the merest flicker of an
embarrassed grin, headed back to their own sides.
BOOK IV
The Book of 101 Things A Boy Can Do
Teppic had expected-
-what?
Possibly the splat of flesh hitting rock. Possibly, although this was on the
very edge of expectation, the sight of the Old Kingdom spread out below him.
He hadn't expected chilly, damp mists.
It is now known to science that there are many more dimensions than the
classical four. Scientists say that these don't normally impinge on the world
because the extra dimensions are very small and curve in on themselves, and that
since reality is fractal most of it is tucked inside itself. This means either
that the universe is more full of wonders than we can hope to understand or,
more probably, that scientists make things up as they go along.
But the multiverse is full of little dimensionettes, playstreets of creation
where creatures of the imagination can romp without being knocked down by
serious actuality. Sometimes, as they drift through the holes in reality, they
impinge back on this universe, when they give rise to myths, legends and charges
of being Drunk and Disorderly.
And it was into one of these that You Bastard, by a trivial miscalculation, had
trotted.
Legend had got it nearly right. The Sphinx did lurk on the borders of the
kingdom. The legend just hadn't been precise about what kind of borders it was
talking about.
The Sphinx is an unreal creature. It exists solely because it has been imagined.
It is well-known that in an infinite universe everything that can be imagined
must exist somewhere, and since many of them are not things that ought to exist
in a well-ordered space-time frame they get shoved into a side dimension. This
may go some way to explaining the Sphinx's chronic bad temper, although any
creature created with the body of a lion, bosom of a woman and wings of an eagle
has a serious identity crisis and doesn't need much to make it angry.
So it had devised the Riddle.
Across various dimensions it had provided the Sphinx with considerable
entertainment and innumerable meals.
This was not known to Teppic as he led You Bastard through the swirling mists,
but the bones he crunched underfoot gave him enough essential detail.
A lot of people had died here. And it was reasonable to assume that the more
recent ones had seen the remains of the earlier ones, and would therefore have
proceeded stealthily. And that hadn't worked.
No sense in creeping along, then. Besides, some of the rocks that loomed out of
the mists had a very distressing shape. This one here, for example, looked
exactly like-
'Halt,' said the Sphinx.
There was no sound but the drip of the mist and the occasional sucking noise of
You Bastard trying to extract moisture from the air.
'You're a sphinx,' said Teppic.
'The Sphinx,' corrected the Sphinx.
'Gosh. We've got any amount of statues to you at home.' Teppic looked up, and
then further up. 'I thought you'd be smaller,' he added.
'Cower, mortal,' said the Sphinx. 'For thou art in the presence of the wise and
the terrible.' It blinked. 'Any good, these statues?'
'They don't do you justice,' said Teppic, truthfully.
'Do you really think so? People often get the nose wrong,' said the Sphinx. 'My
right profile is best, I'm told, and-' It dawned on the Sphinx that it was
sidetracking itself. It coughed sternly.
'Before you can pass me, O mortal,' it said, 'you must answer my riddle.'

'Why?' said Teppic.
'What?' The Sphinx blinked at him. It hadn't been designed for this sort of
thing.
'Why? Why? Because. Er. Because, hang on, yes, because I will bite your head off
if you don't. Yes, I think that's it.'
'Right,' said Teppic. 'Let's hear it, then.'
The Sphinx cleared its throat with a noise like an empty lorry reversing in a
quarry.
'What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the
evening?' said the Sphinx smugly.
Teppic considered this.
'That's a tough one,' he said, eventually.
'The toughest,' said the Sphinx.
'Um.'
'You'll never get it.'
'Ah,' said Teppic.
'Could you take your clothes off while you're thinking? The threads play merry
hell with my teeth.'
'There isn't some kind of animal that regrows legs that have been-'
'Entirely the wrong track,' said the Sphinx, stretching its claws.
'Oh.'
'You haven't got the faintest idea, have you?'
'I'm still thinking,' said Teppic.
'You'll never get it.'
'You're right.' Teppic stared at the claws. This isn't really a fighting animal,
he told himself reassuringly, it's definitely over-endowed. Besides, its bosom
will get in the way, even if its brain doesn't.
'The answer is: "A Man",' said the Sphinx. 'Now, don't put up a fight, please,
it releases unpleasant chemicals into the bloodstream.'
Teppic backed away from a slashing paw. 'Hold on, hold on,' he said. 'What do
you mean, a man?'
'It's easy,' said the Sphinx. 'A baby crawls in the morning, stands on both legs
at noon, and at evening an old man walks with a stick. Good, isn't it?'
Teppic bit his lip. 'We're talking about one day here?' he said doubtfully.
There was a long, embarrassing silence.
'It's a wossname, a figure of speech,' said the Sphinx irritably, making another
lunge.
'No, no, look, wait a minute,' said Teppic. 'I'd like us to be very clear about
this, right? I mean, it's only fair, right?'
'Nothing wrong with the riddle,' said the Sphinx. 'Damn good riddle. Had that
riddle for fifty years, sphinx and cub.' It thought about this. 'Chick,' it
corrected.
'It's a good riddle,' Teppic said soothingly. 'Very deep. Very moving. The whole
human condition in a nutshell. But you've got to admit, this doesn't all happen
to one individual in one day, does it?'
'Well. No,' the Sphinx admitted. 'But that is self-evident from the context. An
element of dramatic analogy is present in all riddles,' it added, with the air
of one who had heard the phrase a long time ago and rather liked it, although
not to the extent of failing to eat the originator.
'Yes, but,' said Teppic crouching down and brushing a clear space on the damp
sand, 'is there internal consistency within the metaphor? Let's say for example
that the average life expectancy is seventy years, okay?'
'Okay,' said the Sphinx, in the uncertain tones of someone who has let the
salesman in and is now regretfully contemplating a future in which they are
undoubtedly going to buy life insurance.
'Right. Good. So noon would be age 35, am I right? Now considering that most
children can toddle at a year or so, the four legs reference is really
unsuitable, wouldn't you agree? I mean, most of the morning is spent on two
legs. According to your analogy' he paused and did a few calculations with a
convenient thighbone- 'only about twenty minutes immediately after 00.00 hours,
half an hour tops, is spent on four legs. Am I right? Be fair.'
'Well-' said the Sphinx.
'By the same token you wouldn't be using a stick by six p.m. because you'd be
only, er, 52,' said Teppic, scribbling furiously. 'In fact you wouldn't really
be looking at any kind of walking aid until at least half past nine, I think.
That's on the assumption that the entire lifespan takes place over one day which
is, I believe I have already pointed out, ridiculous. I'm sorry, it's basically
okay, but it doesn't work.'
'Well,' said the Sphinx, but irritably this time, 'I don't see what I can do
about it. I haven't got any more. It's the only one I've ever needed.'
'You just need to alter it a bit, that's all.'
'How do you mean?'
'Just make it a bit more realistic.'
'Hmm.' The Sphinx scratched its mane with a claw.
'Okay,' it said doubtfully. 'I suppose I could ask: What is it that walks on
four legs'
'Metaphorically speaking,' said Teppic.
'Four legs, metaphorically speaking,' the Sphinx agreed, 'for about-'
'Twenty minutes, I think we agreed.'
'Okay, fine, twenty minutes in the morning, on two legs'
'But I think calling it in "the morning" is stretching it a bit,' said Teppic.
'It's just after midnight. I mean, technically it's the morning, but in a very
real sense it's still last night, what do you think?'
A look of glazed panic crossed the Sphinx's face.
'What do you think?' it managed.
'Let's just see where we've got to, shall we? What, metaphorically speaking,
walks on four legs just after midnight, on two legs for most of the day-'
'Barring accidents,' said the Sphinx, pathetically eager to show that it was
making a contribution.
'Fine, on two legs barring accidents, until at least suppertime, when it walks
with three legs-'
'I've known people use two walking sticks,' said the Sphinx helpfully.
'Okay. How about: when it continues to walk on two legs or with any prosthetic
aids of its choice?'
The Sphinx gave this some consideration.
'Ye-ess,' it said gravely. 'That seems to fit all eventualities.'
'Well?' said Teppic.
'Well what?' said the Sphinx.
'Well, what's the answer?'
The Sphinx gave him a stony look, and then showed its fangs.
'Oh no,' it said. 'You don't catch me out like that. You think I'm stupid?
You've got to tell me the answer.'
'Oh, blow,' said Teppic.
'Thought you had me there, didn't you?' said the Sphinx.
'Sorry.'
'You thought you could get me all confused, did you?'
The Sphinx grinned.
'It was worth a try,' said Teppic.
'Can't blame you. So what's the answer, then?'
Teppic scratched his nose.
'Haven't a clue,' he said. 'Unless, and this is a shot in the dark, you
understand, it's: A Man.'
The Sphinx glared at him.
'You've been here before, haven't you?' it said accusingly.
'No.'
'Then someone's been talking, right?'
'Who could have talked? Has anyone ever guessed the riddle?' said Teppic.
'No!'
'Well, then. They couldn't have talked, could they?'
The Sphinx's claws scrabbled irritably on its rock.
'I suppose you'd better move along, then,' it grumbled.
'Thank you,' said Teppic.
'I'd be grateful if you didn't tell anyone, please,' added the Sphinx, coldly.
'I wouldn't like to spoil it for other people.'
Teppic scrambled up a rock and on to You Bastard.
'Don't you worry about that,' he said, spurring the camel onwards. He couldn't
help noticing the way the Sphinx was moving its lips silently, as though trying
to work something out.
You Bastard had gone only twenty yards or so before an enraged bellow erupted
behind him. For once he forgot the etiquette that says a camel must be hit with
a stick before it does anything. All four feet hit the sand and pushed.
This time he got it right.

The priests were going irrational.
It wasn't that the gods were disobeying them. The gods were ignoring them.
The gods always had. It took great skill to persuade a Djelibeybi god to obey
you, and the priests had to be fast on their toes. For example, if you pushed a
rock off a cliff, then a quick request to the gods that it should fall down was
certain to be answered. In the same way, the gods ensured that the sun set and
the stars came out. Any petition to the gods to see to it that palm trees grew
with their roots in the ground and their leaves on top was certain to be
graciously accepted. On the whole, any priest who cared about such things could
ensure a high rate of success.
However, it was one thing for the gods to ignore you when they were far off and
invisible, and quite another when they were strolling across the landscape. It
made you feel such a fool.
'Why don't they listen?' said the high priest of Teg, the Horse-Headed god of
agriculture. He was in tears. Teg had last been seen sitting in a field, pulling
up corn and giggling.
The other high priests were faring no better. Rituals hallowed by time had
filled the air in the palace with sweet blue smoke and cooked enough assorted
livestock to feed a famine, but the gods were settling in the Old Kingdom as if
they owned it, and the people therein were no more than insects.
And the crowds were still outside. Religion had ruled in the Old Kingdom for the
best part of seven thousand years. Behind the eyes of every priest present was a
graphic image of what would happen if the people ever thought, for one moment,
that it ruled no more.
'And so, Dios,' said Koomi, 'we turn to you. What would you have us do now?'
Dios sat on the steps of the throne and stared gloomily at the floor. The gods
didn't listen. He knew that. He knew that, of all people. But it had never
mattered before. You just went through the motions and came up with an answer.
It was the ritual that was important, not the gods. The gods were there to do
the duties of a megaphone, because who else would people listen to?
While he fought to think clearly his hands went through the motions of the
Ritual of the Seventh Hour, guided by neural instructions as rigid and
unchangeable as crystals.
'You have tried everything?' he said.
'Everything that you advised, O Dios,' said Koomi. He waited until most of the
priests were watching them and then, in a rather louder voice, continued: 'If
the king was here, he would intercede for us.'
He caught the eye of the priestess of Sarduk. He hadn't discussed things with
her; indeed, what was there to discuss? But he had an inkling that there was
some fellow, sorry, feeling there. She didn't like Dios very much, but was less
in awe of him than were the others.
'I told you that the king is dead,' said Dios.
'Yes, we heard you. Yet there seems to be no body, O Dios. Nevertheless, we
believe what you tell us, for it is the great Dios that speaks, and we pay no
heed to malicious gossip.'
The priests were silent. Malicious gossip, too? And somebody had already
mentioned rumours, hadn't they? Definitely something amiss here.
'It happened many times in the past,' said the priestess, on - cue. 'When a
kingdom was threatened or the river did not rise, the king went to intercede
with the gods. Was sent to intercede with the gods.'
The edge of satisfaction in her voice made it clear that it was a one-way trip.
Koomi shivered with delight and horror. Oh, yes. Those were the days. Some
countries had experimented with the idea of the sacrificial king, long ago. A
few years of feasting and ruling, then chop - and make way for a new
administration.
'In a time of crisis, possibly any high-born minister of state would suffice,'
she went on.
Dios looked up, his face mirroring the agony of his tendons.
'I see,' he said. 'And who would be high priest then?'
'The gods would choose,' said Koomi.
'I daresay they would,' said Dios sourly. 'I am in some doubt as to the wisdom
of their choice.'
'The dead can speak to the gods in the netherworld,' said the priestess.
'But the gods are all here,' said Dios, fighting against the throbbing in his
legs, which were insisting that, at this time, they should be walking along the
central corridor en route to supervise the Rite of the Under Sky. His body cried
out for the solace over the river. And once over the river, never to return . .
. but he'd always said that.
'In the absence of the king the high priest performs his duties. Isn't that
right, Dios?' said Koomi.
It was. It was written. You couldn't rewrite it, once it was written. He'd
written it. Long ago.
Dios hung his head. This was worse than plumbing, this was worse than anything.
And yet, and yet. . . to go across the river . . .
'Very well, then,' he said. 'I have one final request.'
'Yes?' Koomi's voice had timbre now, it was already a high priest's voice.
'I wish to be interred in the-' Dios began, and was cut off by a murmur from
those priests who could look out across the river. All eyes turned to the
distant, inky shore.
The legions of the kings of Djelibeybi were on the march. They lurched, but they
covered the ground quickly. There were platoons, battalions of them. They didn't
need Gern's hammer any more.
'It's the pickle,' said the king, as they watched half-a-dozen ancestors
mummyhandle a seal out of its socket. 'It toughens you up.'
Some of the more ancient were getting over enthusiastic and attacking the
pyramids themselves, actually managing to shift blocks higher than they were.
The king didn't blame them. How terrible to be dead, and know you were dead, and
locked away in the darkness.
They're never going to get me in one of those things, he vowed.
At last they came, like a tide, to yet another pyramid. - It was small, low,
dark, half-concealed in drifted sands, and the blocks were hardly even masonry;
they were no more than roughly squared boulders. It had clearly been built long
before the Kingdom got the hang of pyramids. It was barely more than a pile.
Hacked into the doorseal, angular and deep, were the hieroglyphs of the Kingdom:
KHUFT HAD ME MADE. THE FIRST.
Several ancestors clustered around it.
'Oh dear,' said the king. 'This might be going too far.'
'The First,' whispered Dil. 'The First into the Kingdom: No-one here before but
hippos and crocodiles. From inside that pyramid seventy centuries look out at
us. Older than anything-'
'Yes, yes, all right,' said Teppicymon. 'No need to get carried away. He was a
man, just like all of us.'
'"AndKhuftthecamelherderlookedup onthevalley. . ."' Dil began.
'After seven thousand yeares, he wyll be wantyng to look upon yt again,' said
Ashk-ur-men-tep bluntly.
'Even so,' said the king. 'It does seem a bit . .
'The dead are equal,' said Ashk-ur-men-tep. 'You, younge manne. Calle hym
forth.'
'Who, me?' said Gern. 'But he was the Fir-'
'Yes, we've been through all that,' said Teppicymon. 'Do it. Everyone's getting
impatient. So is he, I expect.'
Gern rolled his eyes, and hefted the hammer. Just as it was about to hiss down
on the seal Dil darted forward, causing Gern to dance wildly across the ground
in a groin-straining effort to avoid interring the hammer in his master's head.
'It's open!' said Dil. 'Look! The seal just swings aside!'
'Youe meane he iss oute?'
Teppicymon tottered forward and grabbed the door of the pyramid. It moved quite
easily. Then he examined the stone beneath it. Derelict and half-covered though
it was, someone had taken care to keep a pathway clear to the pyramid. And the
stone was quite worn away, as by the passage of many feet.
This was not, by the nature of things, the normal state of affairs for a
pyramid. The whole point was that once you were in, you were in.
The mummies examined the worn entrance and creaked at one another in surprise.
One of the very ancient ones, who was barely holding himself together, made a
noise like deathwatch beetle finally conquering a rotten tree.
'What'd he say?' said Teppicymon.
The mummy of Ashk-ur-men-tep translated. 'He saide yt ys Spooky,' he croaked.
The late king nodded. 'I'm going in to have a look. You two live ones, you come
with me.'
Dil's face fell.
'Oh, come on, man,' snapped Teppicymon, forcing the door back. 'Look, I'm not
frightened. Show a bit of backbone. Everyone else is.'
'But we'll need some light,' protested Dil.
The nearest mummies lurched back sharply as Gern timidly took a tinderbox out of
his pocket.
'We'll need something to burn,' said Dil. The mummies shuffled further back,
muttering.
'There's torches in here,' said Teppicymon, his voice slightly muffled. 'And you
can keep them away from me, lad.'
It was a small pyramid, mazeless, without traps, just a stone passage leading
upwards. Tremulously, expecting at any moment to see unnamed terrors leap out at
them, the embalmers followed the king into a small, square chamber that smelled
of sand. The roof was black with soot.
There was no sarcophagus within, no mummy case, no terror named or nameless. The
centre of the floor was occupied by a raised block, with a blanket and a pillow
on it.
Neither of them looked particularly old. It was almost disappointing.
Gern craned to look around.
'Quite nice, really,' he said. 'Comfy.'
'No,' said Dil.
'Hey, master king, look here,' said Gern, trotting over to one of the walls.
'Look. Someone's been scratching things. Look, all little lines all over the
wall.'
'And this wall,' said the king, 'and the floor. Someone's been counting. Every
ten have been crossed through, you see. Someone's been counting things. Lots of
things.' He stood back.
'What things?' said Dil, looking behind him.
'Very strange,' said the king. He leaned forward. 'You can barely make out the
inscriptions underneath.'
'Can you read it, king?' said Gern, showing what Dil considered to be
unnecessary enthusiasm.
'No. It's one of the really ancient dialects. Can't make out a blessed
hieroglyph,' said Teppicymon. 'I shouldn't think there's a single person alive
today who can read it.'
'That's a shame,' said Gern.
'True enough,' said the king, and sighed. They stood in gloomy silence.
'So perhaps we could ask one of the dead ones?' said Gern.
'Er. Gern,' said Dil, backing away.
The king slapped the apprentice on the back, pitching him forward.
'Damn clever idea!' he said. 'We'll just go and get one of the real early
ancestors. Oh.' He sagged. 'That's no good. No-one will be able to understand
them-'
'Gern!' said Dil, his eyes growing wider.
'No, it's all right, king,' said Gern, enjoying the new-found freedom of
thought, 'because, the reason being, everyone understands someone, all we have
to do is sort them out.'
'Bright lad. Bright lad,' said the king.
'Gern!'
They both looked at him in astonishment.
'You all right, master?' said Gern. 'You've gone all white.'
'The t-' stuttered Dil, rigid with terror.
'The what, master?'
'The t- look at the t-'
'He ought to have a lie down,' said the king. 'I know his sort. The artistic
type. Highly strung.'
Dil took a deep breath.
'Look at the sodding torch, Gern!' he shouted.
They looked.
Without any fuss, turning its black ashes into dry straw, the torch was burning
backwards.

The Old Kingdom lay stretched out before Teppic, and it was unreal.
He looked at You Bastard, who had stuck his muzzle in a wayside spring and was
making a noise like the last drop in the milkshake glass.[30] You Bastard looked
real enough. There's nothing like a camel for looking really solid. But the
landscape had an uncertain quality, as if it hadn't quite made up its mind to be
there or not.
Except for the Great Pyramid. It squatted in the middle distance as real as the
pin that nails a butterfly to a board. It was contriving to look extremely
solid, as though it was sucking all the solidity out of the landscape into
itself.
Well, he was here. Wherever here was.
How did you kill a pyramid?
And what would happen if you did?
He was working on the hypothesis that everything would snap back into place.
Into the Old Kingdom's pool of recirculated time.
He watched the gods for a while, wondering what the hell they were, and how it
didn't seem to matter. They looked no more real than the land over which they
strode, about incomprehensible errands of their own. The world was no more than
a dream. Teppic felt incapable of surprise. If seven fat cows had wandered by,
he wouldn't have given them a second glance.
He remounted You Bastard and rode him, sloshing gently, down the road. The
fields on either side had a devastated look.
The sun was finally sinking; the gods of night and evening were prevailing over
the daylight gods, but it had been a long struggle and, when you thought about
all the things that would happen to it now - eaten by goddesses, carried on
boats under the world, and so on - it was an odds-on chance that it wouldn't be
seen again.
No-one was visible as he rode into the stable yard. You Bastard padded sedately
to his stall and pulled delicately at a wisp of hay. He'd thought of something
interesting about bivariant distributions.
Teppic patted him on the flank, raising another cloud, and walked up the wide
steps that led to the palace proper. Still there were no guards, no servants. No
living soul.
He slipped into his own palace like a thief in the day, and found his way to
Dil's workshop. It was empty, and looked as though a robber with very peculiar
tastes had recently been at work in there. The throne room smelled like a
kitchen, and by the looks of it the cooks had fled in a hurry.
The gold mask of the kings of Djelibeybi, slightly buckled out of shape, had
rolled into a corner. He picked it up and, on a suspicion, scratched it with one
of his knives. The gold peeled away, exposing a silver-grey gleam.
He'd suspected that. There simply wasn't that much gold around. The mask felt as
heavy as lead because, well, it was lead. He wondered if it had ever been all
gold, and which ancestor had done it, and how many pyramids it had paid for. It
was probably very symbolic of something or other. Perhaps not even symbolic of
anything. Just symbolic, all by itself.
One of the sacred cats was hiding under the throne. It flattened its ears and
spat at Teppic as he reached down to pat it. That much hadn't changed, at least.

Still no people. He padded across to the balcony.
And there the people were, a great silent mass, staring across the river in the
fading, leaden light. As Teppic watched a flotilla of boats and ferries set out
from the near bank.
We ought to have been building bridges, he thought. But we said that would be
shackling the river.
He dropped lightly over the balustrade on to the packed earth and walked down to
the crowd.
And the full force of its belief scythed into him.
The people of Djelibeybi might have had conflicting ideas about their gods, but
their belief in their kings had been unswerving for thousands of years. To
Teppic it was like walking into a vat of alcohol. He felt it pouring into him
until his fingertips crackled, rising up through his body until it gushed into
his brain, bringing not omnipotence but the feeling of omnipotence, the very
strong sensation that while he didn't actually know everything, he would do soon
and had done once.
It had been like this back in Ankh, when the divinity had hooked him. But that
had been just a flicker. Now it had the solid power of real belief behind it.
He looked down at a rustling below him, and saw green shoots springing out of
the dry sand around his feet.
Bloody hell, he thought. I really am a god.
This could be very embarrassing.
He shouldered his way through the press of people until he reached the riverbank
and stood there in a thickening clump of corn. As the crowd caught on, those
nearest fell to their knees, and a circle of reverentially collapsing people
spread out from Teppic like ripples.
But I never wanted this! I just wanted to help people live more happily, with
plumbing. I wanted something done about rundown inner-city areas. I just wanted
to put them at their ease, and ask them how they enjoyed their lives. I thought
schools might be a good idea, so they wouldn't fall down and worship someone
just because he's got green feet.
And I wanted to do something about the architecture... As the light drained from
the sky like steel going cold the pyramid was somehow even bigger than before.
If you had to design something to give the very distinct impression of mass, the
pyramid was It. There was a crowd of figures around it, unidentifiable in the
grey light.
Teppic looked around the prostrate crowd until he saw someone in the uniform of
the palace guard.
'You, man, on your feet,' he commanded.
The man gave him a look of dread, but did stagger sheepishly upright.
'What's going on here?'
'O king, who is the lord of-'
'I don't think we have time,' said Teppic. 'I know who I am, I want to know
what's happening.'
'O king, we saw the dead walking! The priests have gone to talk to them.'
'The dead walking?'
'Yes, O king.'
'We're talking about not-alive people here, are we?'
'Yes, O king.'
'Oh. Well, thank you. That was very succinct. Not informative, but succinct. Are
there any boats around?'
'The priests took them all, O king.'
Teppic could see that this was true. The jetties near the palace were usually
thronged with boats, and now they were all empty. As he stared at the water it
grew two eyes and a long snout, to remind him that swimming the Djel was as
feasible as nailing fog to the wall.
He stared at the crowd. Every person was watching him expectantly, convinced
that he would know what to do next.
He turned back to the river, extended his hands in front of him, pressed them
together and then opened them gently. There was a damp sucking noise, and the
waters of the Djel parted in front of him. There was a sigh from the crowd, but
their astonishment was nothing to the surprise of a dozen or so crocodiles, who
were left trying to swim in ten feet of air.
Teppic ran down the bank and over the heavy mud, dodging to avoid the tails that
slashed wildly at him as the reptiles dropped heavily on to the riverbed.
The Djel loomed up as two khaki walls, so that he was running along a damp and
shadowy alley. Here and there were fragments of bones, old shields, bits of
spear, the ribs of boats. He leapt and jinked around the debris of centuries.
Ahead of him a big bull crocodile propelled itself dreamily out of the wall of
water, flailed madly in mid-air, and flopped into the ooze. Teppic trod heavily
on its snout and plunged on.
Behind him a few of the quicker citizens, seeing the dazed creatures below them,
began to look for stones. The crocodiles had been undisputed masters of the
river since primordial times, but if it was possible to do a little catching-up
in the space of a few minutes, it was certainly worth a try.
The sound of the monsters of the river beginning the long journey to handbaghood
broke out behind Teppic as he sloshed up the far bank.

A line of ancestors stretched across the chamber, down the dark passageway, and
out into the sand. It was filled with whispers going in both directions, a dry
sound, like the wind blowing through old paper.
Dil lay on the sand, with Gern flapping a cloth in his face.
'Wha' they doing?' he murmured.
'Reading the inscription,' said Gern. 'You ought to see it, master! The one
doing the reading, he's practically a-'
'Yes, yes, all right,' said Dil, struggling up.
'He's more than six thousand years old! And his grandson's listening to him, and
telling his grandson, and he's telling his gra-'
'Yes, yes, all-'
'"And Khuft-too-said-Unto-the-First, What-may-We-Give-Unto-You,
Who-Has-Taught-Us-the-Right-Ways",' said Teppicymon[31], who was at the end of
the line. '"And-the-First-Spake, and-This-He-Spake, Build-for-Me-a-Pyramid,
That-I-May-Rest, and-Build-it-of-These-Dimensions, That-it-Be-Proper.
And-Thus-It-Was-Done, and-The-Name-of-the-First-was . . ."'
But there was no name. It was just a babble of raised voices, arguments, ancient
cursewords, spreading along the line of desiccated ancestors like a spark along
a powder trail. Until it reached Teppicymon, who exploded.

The Ephebian sergeant, quietly perspiring in the shade, saw what he had been
half expecting and wholly dreading. There was a column of dust on the opposite
horizon. The Tsorteans' main force was getting there first.
He stood up, nodded professionally to his counterpart across the way, and looked
at the double handful of men under his command.
'I need a messenger to take, er, a message back to the city,' he said. A forest
of hands shot up. The sergeant sighed, and selected young Autocue, who he knew
was missing his mum.
'Run like the wind,' he said. 'Although I expect you won't need telling, will
you? And then . . . and then . .
He stood with his lips moving silently, while the sun scoured the rocks of the
hot, narrow pass and a few insects buzzed in the scrub bushes. His education
hadn't included a course in Famous Last Words.
He raised his eyes in the direction of home.
'Go, tell the Ephebians-' he began.
The soldiers waited.
'What?' said Autocue after a while. 'Go and tell them what?'
The sergeant relaxed, like air being let out of a balloon.
'Go and tell them, what kept you?' he said. On the near horizon another column
of dust was advancing.
This was more like it. If there was going to be a massacre, then it ought to be
shared by both sides.

The city of the dead lay before Teppic. After Ankh-Morpork, which was almost its
direct opposite (in Ankh, even the bedding was alive) it was probably the
biggest city on the Disc; its streets were the finest, its architecture the most
majestic and awe-inspiring.
In population terms the necropolis outstripped the other cities of the Old
Kingdom, but its people didn't get out much and there was nothing to do on
Saturday nights.
Until now.
Now it thronged:
Teppic watched from the top of a wind-etched obelisk as the grey and brown, and
here and there somewhat greenish, armies of the departed passed beneath him. The
kings had been democratic. After the pyramids had been emptied gangs of them had
turned their attention to the lesser tombs, and now the necropolis really did
have its tradesmen, its nobles and even its artisans. Not that there was, by and
large, any way of telling the difference.
They were, to a corpse, heading for the Great Pyramid. It loomed like a
carbuncle over the lesser, older buildings. And they all seemed very angry about
something.
Teppic dropped lightly on to the wide flat roof of a mastaba, jogged to its far
end, cleared the gap on to an ornamental sphinx - not without a moment's worry,
but this one seemed inert enough - and from there it was but the throw of a
grapnel to one of the lower storeys of a step pyramid. The long light of the
contentious sun lanced across the spent landscape as he leapt from monument to
monument, zig-zagging high above the shuffling army.
Behind him shoots appeared briefly in the ancient stone, cracking it a little,
and then withered and died.
This, said his blood as it tingled around his body, is what you trained for.
Even Mericet couldn't mark you down for this. Speeding in the shadows above a
silent city, running like a cat, finding handholds that would have perplexed a
gecko - and, at the destination, a victim.
True, it was a billion tons of pyramid, and hitherto the largest client of an
inhumation had been Patricio, the 23-stone Despot of Quirm.
A monumental needle recording in bas-relief the achievements of a king four
thousand years ago, and which would have been more pertinent if the wind-driven
sand hadn't long ago eroded his name, provided a handy ladder which needed only
an expertly thrown grapnel from its top, lodging in the outstretched fingers of
a forgotten monarch, to allow him a long, gentle arc on to the roof of a tomb.
Running, climbing and swinging, hastily hammering crampons in the memorials of
the dead, Teppic went forth.

Pinpoints of firelight among the limestone pricked out the lines of the opposing
armies. Deep and stylised though the enmity was between the two empires, they
both abided by the ancient tradition that warfare wasn't undertaken at night,
during harvest or when wet. It was important enough to save up for special
occasions. Going at it hammer and tongs just reduced the whole thing to a farce.

In the twilight on both sides of the line came the busy sound of advanced
woodwork in progress.
It's said that generals are always ready to fight the last War over again. It
had been thousands of years since the last war between Tsort and Ephebe, but
generals have long memories and this time they were ready for it.
On both sides of the line, wooden horses were taking shape.

'It's gone,' said Ptaclusp IIb, slithering back down the pile of rubble.
'About time, too,' said his father. 'Help me fold up your brother. You're sure
it won't hurt him?'
'Well, if we do it carefully he can't move in Time, that is, width to us. So if
no time can pass for him, nothing can hurt him.'
Ptaclusp thought of the old days, when pyramid building had simply consisted of
piling one block on another and all you needed to remember was that you put less
on top as you went up. And now it meant trying to put a crease in one of your
sons.
'Right,' he said doubtfully. 'Let's be off, then.' He inched his way up the
debris and poked his head over the top just as the vanguard of the dead came
round the corner of the nearest minor pyramid.
His first thought was: this is it, they're coming to complain. He'd done his
best. It wasn't always easy to build to a budget. Maybe not every lintel was
exactly as per drawings, perhaps the quality of the internal plasterwork wasn't
always up to snuff, but . . .
They can't all be complaining. Not this many of them.
Ptaclusp IIb climbed up alongside him. His mouth dropped open.
'Where are they all coming from?' he said.
'You're the expert. You tell me.
'Are they dead?'
Ptaclusp scrutinised some of the approaching marchers.
'If they're not, some of them are awfully ill,' he said.
'Let's make a run for it!'
'Where to? Up the pyramid?'
The Great Pyramid loomed up behind them, its throbbing filling the air. Ptaclusp
stared at it.
'What's going to happen tonight?' he said.
'What?'
'Well, is it going to - do whatever it did - again?'
IIb stared at him. 'Dunno.'
'Can you find out?'
'Only by waiting. I'm not even sure what it's done now.
'Are we going to like it?'
'I shouldn't think so, dad. Oh, dear.'
'What's up now?'
'Look over there.'
Heading towards the marching dead, trailing behind Koomi like a tail behind a
comet, were the priests.

It was hot and dark inside the horse. It was also very crowded.
They waited, sweating.
Young Autocue stuttered: 'What'll happen now, sergeant?'
The sergeant moved a foot tentatively. The atmosphere would have induced
claustrophobia in a sardine.
'Well, lad. They'll find us, see, and be so impressed they'll drag us all the
way back to their city, and then when it's dark we'll leap out and put them to
the sword. Or put the sword to them. One or the other. And then we'll sack the
city, bum the walls and sow the ground with salt. You remember, lad, I showed
you on Friday.'
'Oh.'
Moisture dripped from a score of brows. Several of the men were trying to
compose a letter home, dragging styli across wax that was close to melting.
'And then what will happen, sergeant?'
'Why, lad, then we'll go home heroes.'
'Oh.'
The older soldiers sat stolidly looking at the wooden walls. Autocue shifted
uneasily, still worried about something.
'My mum said to come back with my shield or on it, sergeant,' he said.
'Jolly good, lad. That's the spirit.'
'We will be all right, though. Won't we, sergeant?'
The sergeant stared into the fetid darkness.
After a while, someone started to play the harmonica.

Ptaclusp half-turned his head from the scene and a voice by his ear said,
'You're the pyramid builder, aren't you?'
Another figure had joined them in their bolthole, one who was black-clad and
moved in a way that made a cat's tread sound like a one-man band.
Ptaclusp nodded, unable to speak. He had had enough shocks for one day.
'Well, switch it off. Switch it off now.'
IIb leaned over.
'Who're you?' he said.
'My name is Teppic.'
'What, like the king?'
'Yes. Just like the king. Now turn it off.'
'It's a pyramid! You can't turn off pyramids!' said IIb.
'Well, then, make it flare.'
'We tried that last night.' IIb pointed to the shattered capstone. 'Unroll
Two-Ay, dad.'
Teppic regarded the flat brother.
'It's some sort of wall poster, is it?' he said eventually.
IIb looked down. Teppic saw the movement, and looked down also; he was
ankle-deep in green sprouts.
'Sorry,' he said. 'I can't seem to shake it off.'
'It can be dreadful,' said IIb frantically. 'I know how it is, I had this
verruca once, nothing would shift it.'
Teppic hunkered down by the cracked stone.
'This thing,' he said. 'What's the significance? I mean, it's coated with metal.
Why?'
'There's got to be a sharp point for the flare,' said IIb.
'Is that all? This is gold, isn't it?'
'It's electrum. Gold and silver alloy. The capstone has got to be made of
electrum.'
Teppic peeled back the foil.
'This isn't all metal,' he said mildly.
'Yes. Well,' said Ptaclusp. 'We found, er, that foil works just as well.'
'Couldn't you use something cheaper? Like steel?' Ptaclusp sneered. It hadn't
been a good day, sanity was a distant memory, but there were certain facts he
knew for a fact.
'Wouldn't last for more than a year or two,' he said. 'What with the dew and so
forth. You'd lose the point. Wouldn't last more than two or three hundred
times.'
Teppic leaned his head against the pyramid. It was cold, and it hummed. He
thought he could hear, under the throbbing, a faint rising tone.
The pyramid towered over him. (IIb could have told him that this was because the
walls sloped in at precisely 56 degrees, and an effect known as battering made
the pyramid loom even higher than it really was. He probably would have used
words like perspective and virtual height as well.
The black marble was glassy smooth. The masons had done well. The cracks between
each silky panel were hardly wide enough to insert a knife. But wide enough, all
the same.
'How about once?' he said.

Koomi chewed his fingernails distractedly.
'Fire,' he said. 'That'd stop them. They're very inflammable. Or water. They'd
probably dissolve.'
'Some of them were destroying pyramids,' said the high priest of Juf, the
Cobra-Headed God of Papyrus.
'People always come back from the dead in such a bad temper,' said another
priest.
Koomi watched the approaching army in mounting bewilderment.
'Where's Dios?' he said.
The old high priest was pushed to the front of the crowd.
'What shall I say to them?' Koomi demanded.
It would be wrong to say that Dios smiled. It wasn't an action he often felt
called upon to perform. But his mouth creased at the edges and his eyes went
half-hooded.
'You could tell them,' he said, 'that new times demand new men. You could tell
them that it is time to make way for younger people with fresh ideas. You could
tell them that they are outmoded. You could tell them all that.'
'They'll kill me!'
'Would they be that anxious for your eternal company, I wonder?'
'You're still high priest!'
'Why don't you talk to them?' said Dios. 'Don't forget to tell them that they
are to be dragged kicking and screaming into the Century of the Cobra.' He
handed Koomi the staff. 'Or whatever this century is called,' he added.
Koomi felt the eyes of the assembled brethren and sistren upon him. He cleared
his throat, adjusted his robe, and turned to face the mummies.
They were chanting something, one word, over and over again. He couldn't quite
make it out, but it seemed to have worked them up into a rage.
He raised the staff, and the carved wooden snakes looked unusually alive in the
flat light.
The gods of the Disc - and here is meant the great consensus gods, who really do
exist in Dunmanifestin, their semi-detached Valhalla on the world's impossibly
high central mountain, where they pass the time observing the petty antics of
mortal men and organising petitions about how the influx of the Ice Giants has
lowered property values in the celestial regions - the gods of Disc have always
been fascinated by humanity's incredible ability to say exactly the wrong thing
at the wrong time.
They're not talking here of such easy errors as 'It's perfectly safe', or 'The
ones that growl a lot don't bite', but of simple little sentences which are
injected into difficult situations with the same general effect as a steel bar
dropped into the bearings of a 3,000 rpm, 660 megawatt steam turbine.
And connoisseurs of mankind's tendency to put his pedal extremity where his
tongue should be are agreed that when the judges' envelopes are opened then Hoot
Koomi's fine performance in 'Begone from this place, foul shades' will be a
contender for all-time bloody stupid greeting.
The front row of ancestors halted, and were pushed forward a little by the press
of those behind.
King Teppicymon XXVII, who by common consent among the other twenty-six
Teppicymons was spokesman, lurched on alone and picked up the trembling Koomi by
his arms.
'What did you say?' he said.
Koomi's eyes rolled. His mouth opened and shut, but his voice wisely decided not
to come out.
Teppicymon pushed his bandaged face close to the priest's pointed nose.
'I remember you,' he growled. 'I've seen you oiling around the place. A bad hat,
if ever I saw one. I remember thinking that.'
He glared around at the others.
'You're all priests, aren't you? Come to say sorry, have you? Where's Dios?'
The ancestors pressed forward, muttering. When you've been dead for hundreds of
years, you're not inclined to feel generous to those people who assured you that
you were going to have a lovely time. There was a scuffle in the middle of the
crowd as King Psam-nut-kha, who had spent five thousand years with nothing to
look at but the inside of a lid, was restrained by younger colleagues.
Teppicymon switched his attention back to Koomi, who hadn't gone anywhere.
'Foul shades, was it?' he said.
'Er,' said Koomi.
'Put him down.' Dios gently took the staff from Koomi's unresisting fingers and
said, 'I am Dios, the high priest. Why are you here?'
It was a perfectly calm and reasonable voice, with overtones of concerned but
indubitable authority. It was a tone of voice the pharaohs of Djelibeybi had
heard for thousands of years, a voice which had regulated the days, prescribed
the rituals, cut the time into carefully-turned segments, interpreted the ways
of gods to men. It was the sound of authority, which stirred antique memories
among the ancestors and caused them to look embarrassed and shuffle their feet.
One of the younger pharaohs lurched forward.
'You bastard,' he croaked. 'You laid us out and shut us away, one by one, and
you went on. People thought the name was passed on but it was always you. How
old are you, Dios?'
There was no sound. No-one moved. A breeze stirred the dust a little.
Dios sighed.
'I did not mean to,' he said. 'There was so much to do. There were never enough
hours in the day. Truly, I did not realise what was happening. I thought it was
refreshing, nothing more, I suspected nothing. I noted the passing of the
rituals, not the years.'
'Come from a long-lived family, do you?' said Teppicymon sarcastically.
Dios stared at him, his lips moving. 'Family,' he said at last, his voice
softened from its normal bark. 'Family. Yes. I must have had a family, mustn't
I. But, you know, I can't remember. Memory is the first thing that goes. The
pyramids don't seem to preserve it, strangely.'
'This is Dios, the footnote-keeper of history?' said Teppicymon.
'Ah.' The high priest smiled. 'Memory goes from the head. But it is all around
me. Every scroll and book.'
'That's the history of the kingdom, man!'
'Yes. My memory.'
The king relaxed a little. Sheer horrified fascination was unravelling the knot
of fury.
'How old are you?' he said.
'I think... seven thousand years. But sometimes it seems much longer.'
'Really seven thousand years?'
'Yes,' said Dios.
'How could any man stand it?' said the king.
Dios shrugged.
'Seven thousand years is just one day at a time,' he said. Slowly, with the
occasional wince, he got down on one knee and held up his staff in shaking
hands.
'O kings,' he said, 'I have always existed only to serve.'
There was a long, extremely embarrassed pause.
'We will destroy the pyramids,' said Far-re-ptah, pushing forward.
'You will destroy the kingdom,' said Dios. 'I cannot allow it.'
'You cannot allow it?'
'Yes. What will we be without the pyramids?' said Dios.
'Speaking for the dead,' said Far-re-ptah, 'we will be free.'
'But the kingdom will be just another small country,' said Dios, and to their
horror the ancestors saw tears in his eyes.
'All that we hold dear, you will cast adrift in time. Uncertain. Without
guidance. Changeable.'
'Then it can take its chances,' said Teppicymon. 'Stand aside, Dios.'
Dios held up his staff. The snake around it uncoiled and hissed at the king.
'Be still,' said Dios.
Dark lightning crackled between the ancestors. Dios stared at the staff in
astonishment; it had never done this before.
But seven thousand years of his priests had believed, in their hearts, that the
staff of Dios could rule this world and the next.
In the sudden silence there was the faint chink, high up, of a knife being
wedged between two black marble slabs.

The pyramid pulsed under Teppic, and the marble was as slippery as ice. The
inward slope wasn't the help he had expected.
The thing, he told himself, is not to look up or down, but straight ahead, into
the marble, parcelling the impossible height into manageable sections. Just like
time. That's how we survive infinity - we kill it by breaking it up into small
bits.
He was aware of shouts below him, and glanced briefly over his shoulder. He was
barely a third of the way up, but he could see the crowds across the river, a
grey mass speckled with the pale blobs of upturned faces. Closer to, the pale
army of the dead, facing the small grey group of priests, with Dios in front of
them. There was some sort of argument going on.
The sun was on the horizon.
He reached up, located the next crack, found a handhold.

Dios spotted Ptaclusp's head peering over the debris, and sent a couple of
priests to bring him back. IIb followed, his carefully folded brother under his
arm.
'What is the boy doing?' Dios demanded.
'O Dios, he said he was going to flare off the pyramid,' said Ptaclusp.
'How can he do that?'
'O lord, he says he is going to cap it off before the sun sets.'
'Is it possible?' Dios demanded, turning to the architect. IIb hesitated.
'It may be,' he said.
'And what will happen? Will we return to the world outside?'
'Well, it depends on whether the dimensional effect ratchets, as it were, and is
stable in each state, or if, on the contrary, the pyramid is acting as a piece
of rubber under tension-'
His voice stuttered to a halt under the intensity of Dios's stare.
'I don't know,' he admitted.
'Back to the world outside,' said Dios. 'Not our world. Our world is the Valley.
Ours is a world of order. Men need order.'
He raised his staff.
'That's my son!' shouted Teppicymon. 'Don't you dare try anything! That's the
king!'
The ranks of ancestors swayed, but couldn't break the spell.
'Er, Dios,' said Koomi.
Dios turned, his eyebrows raised.
'You spoke?' he said.
'Er, if it is the king, er I - that is, we - think perhaps you should let him
get on with it. Er, don't you think that would be a really good idea?'
Dios's staff kicked, and the priests felt the cold bands of restraint freeze
their limbs.
'I gave my life for the kingdom,' said the high priest. 'I gave it over and over
again. Everything it is, I created. I cannot fail it now.'
And then he saw the gods.

Teppic eased himself up another couple of feet and then gently reached down to
pull a knife out of the marble. It wasn't going to work, though. Knife climbing
was for those short and awkward passages, and frowned on anyway because it
suggested you'd chosen a wrong route. It wasn't for this sort of thing, unless
you had unlimited knives.
He glanced over his shoulder again as strange barred shadows flickered across
the face of the pyramid.
From out of the sunset, where they had been engaged in their eternal squabbling,
the gods were returning.
They staggered and lurched across the fields and reed beds, heading for the
pyramid. Near-brainless though they were, they understood what it was. Perhaps
they even understood what Teppic was trying to do. Their assorted animal faces
made it hard to be certain, but it looked as though they were very angry.

'Are you going to control them, Dios?' said the king. 'Are you going to tell
them that the world should be changeless?'
Dios stared up at the creatures jostling one another as they waded the river.
There were too many teeth, too many lolling tongues. The bits of them that were
human were sloughing away. A lion-headed god of justice - Put, Dios recalled the
name - was using its scales as a flail to beat one of the river gods. Chefet,
the Dog-Headed God of metalwork, was growling and attacking his fellows at
random with his hammer; this was Chefet, Dios thought, the god that he had
created to be an example to men in the art of wire and filigree and small
beauty.
Yet it had worked. He'd taken a desert rabble and shown them all he could
remember of the arts of civilisation and the secrets of the pyramids. He'd
needed gods then.
The trouble with gods is that after enough people start believing in them, they
begin to exist. And what begins to exist isn't what was originally intended.
Chefet, Chefet, thought Dios. Maker of rings, weaver of metal. Now he's out of
our heads, and see how his nails grow into claws . . .
This is not how I imagined him.
'Stop,' he instructed. 'I order you to stop! You will obey me. I made you!'
They also lack gratitude.
King Teppicymon felt the power around him weaken as Dios turned all his
attention to ecclesiastical matters. He saw the tiny shape halfway up the wall
of the pyramid, saw it falter.
The rest of the ancestors saw it, too, and as one corpse they knew what to do.
Dios could wait.
This was family.

Teppic heard the snap of the handle under his foot, slid a little, and hung by
one hand. He'd got another knife in above him but . . . no, no good. He hadn't
got the reach. For practical purposes his arms felt like short lengths of wet
rope. Now, if he spreadeagled himself as he slid, he might be able to slow
enough .
He looked down and saw the climbers coming towards him, in a tide that was
tumbling upwards.
The ancestors rose up the face of the pyramid silently, like creepers, each new
row settling into position on the shoulders of the generation beneath, while the
younger ones climbed on over them. Bony hands grabbed Teppic as the wave of
edificeers broke around him, and he was half-pushed, half-pulled up the sloping
wall. Voices like the creak of sarcophagi filled his ears, moaning
encouragement.
'Well done, boy,' groaned a crumbling mummy, hauling him bodily on to its
shoulder. 'You remind me of me when I was alive. To you, son.'
'Got him,' said the corpse above, lifting Teppic easily on one outstretched arm.
'That's a fine family spirit, lad. Best wishes from your great-great-great-great
uncle, although I don't suppose you remember me. Coming up.
Other ancestors were climbing on past Teppic as he rose from hand to hand.
Ancient fingers with a grip like steel clutched at him, hoisting him onwards.
The pyramid grew narrower.
Down below, Ptaclusp watched thoughtfully.
'What a workforce,' he said. 'I mean, the ones at the bottom are supporting the
whole weight!'
'Dad,' said IIb. 'I think we'd better run. Those gods are getting closer.'
'Do you think we could employ them?' said Ptaclusp, ignoring him. 'They're dead,
they probably won't want high wages, and-'
'Dad!'
'Sort of self-build-'
'You said no more pyramids, dad. Never again, you said. Now come on!'
Teppic scrambled to the top of the pyramid, supported by the last two ancestors.
One of them was his father.
'I don't think you've met your great-grandma,' he said, indicating the shorter
bandaged figure, who nodded gently at Teppic. He opened his mouth.
'There's no time,' she said. 'You're doing fine.'
He glanced at the sun which, old professional that it was, chose that moment to
drop below the horizon. The gods had crossed the river, their progress slowed
only by their tendency to push and shove among themselves, and were lurching
through the buildings of the necropolis. Several were clustered around the spot
where Dios had been.
The ancestors dropped away, sliding back down the pyramid as fast as they had
climbed it, leaving Teppic alone on a few square feet of rock.
A couple of stars came out.
He saw white shapes below as the ancestors hurried away on some private errand
of their own, lurching at a surprising speed towards the broad band of the
river.
The gods abandoned their interest in Dios, this strange little human with the
stick and the cracked voice. The nearest god, a crocodile-headed thing, jerked
on to the plaza before the pyramid, squinted up at Teppic, and reached out
towards him. Teppic fumbled for a knife, wondering what sort was appropriate for
gods .
And, along the Djel, the pyramids began to flare their meagre store of hoarded
time.

Priests and ancestors fled as the ground began to shake. Even the gods looked
bewildered.
IIb snatched his father's arm and dragged him away.
'Come on!' he yelled into his ear. 'We can't be around here when it goes off!
Otherwise you'll be put to bed on a coathanger!'
Around them several other pyramids struck their flares, thin and reedy affairs
that were barely visible in the afterglow.
'Dad! I said we've got to go!'
Ptaclusp was dragged backwards across the flagstones, still staring at the
hulking outline of the Great Pyramid.
'There's someone still there, look,' he said, and pointed to a figure alone on
the plaza.
IIb peered into the gloom.
'It's only Dios, the high priest,' he said. 'I expect he's got some plan in
mind, best not to meddle in the affairs of priests, now will you come on.'
The crocodile-headed god turned its snout back and forth, trying to focus on
Teppic without the advantage of binocular vision. This close, its body was
slightly transparent, as though someone had sketched in all the lines and got
bored before it was time to do the shading. It trod on a small tomb, crushing it
to powder.
A hand like a cluster of canoes with claws on hovered over Teppic. The pyramid
trembled and the stone under his feet felt warm, but it resolutely forbore from
any signs of wanting to flare.
The hand descended. Teppic sank on one knee and, out of desperation, raised the
knife over his head in both hands.
The light glinted for a moment off the tip of the blade and then the Great
Pyramid flared.
It did it in absolute silence to begin with, sending up a spire of eye-torturing
flame that turned the whole kingdom into a criss-cross of black shadow and white
light, a flame that might have turned any watchers not just into a pillar of
salt but into a complete condiment set of their choice. It exploded like an
unwound dandelion, silent as starlight, searing as a supernova.
Only after it had been bathing the necropolis in its impossible brilliance for
several seconds did the sound come, and it was sound that winds itself up
through the bones, creeps into every cell of the body, and tries with some
success to turn them inside out. It was too loud to be called noise. There is
sound so loud that it prevents itself from being heard, and this was that kind
of sound.
Eventually it condescended to drop out of the cosmic scale and became, simply,
the loudest noise anyone hearing it had ever experienced.
The noise stopped, filling the air with the dark metallic clang of sudden
silence. The light went out, lancing the night with blue and purple afterimages.
It was not the silence and darkness of conclusion but of pause, like the moment
of equilibrium when a thrown ball runs out of acceleration but has yet to have
gravity drawn to its attention and, for a brief moment, thinks that the worst is
over.
This time it was heralded by a shrill whistling out of the clear sky and a swirl
in the air that became a glow, became a flame, became a flare that sizzled
downwards into the pyramid, punching into the mass of black marble. Fingers of
lightning crackled out and grounded on the lesser tombs around it, so that
serpents of white fire burned their way from pyramid to pyramid across the
necropolis and the air filled with the stink of burning stone.
In the middle of the firestorm the Great Pyramid appeared to lift up a few
inches, on a beam of incandescence, and turn through ninety degrees. This was
almost certainly the special type of optical illusion which can take place even
though noone is actually looking at it.
And then, with deceptive slowness and considerable dignity, it exploded.
It was almost too crass a word. What it did was this: it came apart ponderously
into building-sized chunks which drifted gently away from one another, flying
serenely out and over the necropolis. Several of them struck other pyramids,
badly damaging them in a lazy, unselfconscious way, and then bounded on in
silence until they ploughed to a halt behind a small mountain of rubble.
Only then did the boom come. It went on for quite along time.

Grey dust rolled over the kingdom.
Ptaclusp dragged himself upright and groped ahead, gingerly, until he walked
into someone. He shuddered when he thought about the kind of people he'd seen
walking around lately, but thought didn't come easily because something appeared
to have hit him on the head recently .
'Is that you, lad?' he ventured.
'Is that you, dad?'
'Yes,' said Ptaclusp.
'It's me, dad.'
'I'm glad it's you, son.'
'Can you see anything?'
'No. It's all mist and fog.'
'Thank the gods for that, I thought it was me.'
'It is you, isn't it? You said.'
'Yes, dad.'
'Is your brother all right?'
'I've got him safe in my pocket, dad.'
'Good. So long as nothing's happened to him.'
They inched forward, clambering over lumps of masonry they could barely see.
'Something exploded, dad,' said IIb, slowly. 'I think it was the pyramid.'
Ptaclusp rubbed the top of his head, where two tons of flying rock had come
within a sixteenth of an inch of fitting him for one of his own pyramids. 'It
was that dodgy cement we bought from Merco the Ephebian, I expect-'
'I think this was a bit worse than a moody lintel, dad,' said IIb. 'In fact, I
think it was a lot worse.'
'It looked a bit wossname, a bit on the sandy side-'
'I think you should find somewhere to sit down, dad,' said IIb, as kindly as
possible. 'Here's Two-Ay. Hang on to him.'
He crept on alone, climbing over a slab of what felt very suspiciously like
black marble. What he wanted, he decided, was a priest. They had to be useful
for something, and this seemed the sort of time one might need one. For solace,
or possibly, he felt obscurely, to beat their head in with a rock.
What he found instead was someone on their hands and knees, coughing. IIb helped
him - it was definitely a him, he'd been briefly afraid it might be an it - and
sat him on another lump of, yes, almost certainly marble.
'Are you a priest?' he said, fumbling in the rubble.
'I'm Dil. Chief embalmer,' the figure muttered.
'Ptaclusp IIb, paracosmic archi-' IIb began and then, suspecting that architects
were not going to be too popular around here for a while, quickly corrected
himself. 'I'm an engineer,' he said. 'Are you all right?'
'Don't know. What happened?'
'I think the pyramid exploded,' IIb volunteered.
'Are we dead?'
'I shouldn't think so. You're walking and talking, after all.'
Dil shivered. 'That's no guideline, take it from me. What's an engineer?'
'Oh, a builder of aqueducts,' said IIb quickly. 'They're the coming thing, you
know.'
Dil stood up, a little shakily.
'I,' he said, 'need a drink. Let's find the river.'
They found Teppic first.
He was clinging to a small, truncated pyramid section that had made a
moderate-sized crater when it landed.
'I know him,' said IIb. 'He's the lad who was on top of the pyramid. That's
ridiculous, how could he survive that?'
'Why's there all corn sprouting out of it, too?' wondered Dil.
'I mean, perhaps there's some kind of effect if you're right in the centre of
the flare, or something,' said IIb, thinking aloud. 'A sort of calm area or
something, like in the middle of a whirlpool-' He reached instinctively for his
wax tablet, and then stopped himself. Man was never intended to understand
things he meddled with. 'Is he dead?' he said. 'Don't look at me,' said Dil,
stepping back. He'd been running through his mind the alternative occupations
now open to him. Upholstery sounded attractive. At least chairs didn't get up
and walk after you'd stuffed them. IIb bent over the body.
'Look what he's got in his hand,' he said, gently bending back the fingers.
'It's a piece of melted metal. What's he got that for?'
Teppic dreamed.
He saw seven fat cows and seven thin cows, and one of them was riding a bicycle.

He saw some camels, singing, and the song straightened out the wrinkles in
reality.
He saw a finger Write on the wall of a pyramid: Going forth is easy. Going back
requires (cont. on next wall) . . .
He walked around the pyramid, where the finger continued: An effort of will,
because it is much harder. Thank you.
Teppic considered this, and it occurred to him that there was one thing left to
do which he had not done. He'd never known how to before, but now he could see
that it was just numbers, arranged in a special way. Everything that was magical
was just a way of describing the world in words it couldn't ignore.
He gave a grunt of effort.
There was a brief moment of speed. Dil and IIb looked around as long shafts of
light sparkled through the mists and dust, turning the landscape into old gold.
And the sun came up.

The sergeant cautiously opened the hatch in the horse's belly. When the expected
flurry of spears did not materialise he ordered Autocue to let out the rope
ladder, climbed down it, and looked across the chill morning desert.
The new recruit followed him down and stood, hopping from one sandal to another,
on sand that was nearly freezing now and would be frying by lunchtime.
'There,' said the sergeant, pointing, 'see the Tsortean lines, lad?'
'Looks like a row of wooden horses to me, sergeant,' said Autocue. 'The one on
the end's on rockers.'
'That'll be the officers. Huh. Those Tsorteans must think we're simple.' The
sergeant stamped some life into his legs, took a few breaths of fresh air, and
walked back to the ladder.
'Come on, lad,' he said.
'Why've we got to go back up there?'
The sergeant paused, his foot on a rope rung.
'Use some common, laddie. They're not going to come and take our horses if they
see us hanging around outside, are they? Stands to reason.'
'You sure they're going to come, then?' said Autocue. The sergeant frowned at
him.
'Look, soldier,' he said, 'anyone bloody stupid enough to think we're going to
drag a lot of horses full of soldiers back to our city is certainly daft enough
to drag ours all the way back to theirs. QED.'
'QED, sarge?'
'It means get back up the bloody ladder, lad.'
Autocue saluted. 'Permission to be excused first, sarge?'
'Excused what?'
'Excused, sarge,' said Autocue, a shade desperately. 'I mean, it's a bit cramped
in the horse, sarge, if you know what I mean.'
'You're going to have to learn a bit of will power if you want to stay in the
horse soldiers, boy. You know that?'
'Yes, sarge,' said Autocue miserably.
'You've got one minute.'
'Thanks, sarge.'
When the hatch closed above him Autocue sidled over to one of the horse's
massive legs and put it to a use for which it wasn't originally intended.
And it was while he was staring vaguely ahead, lost in that Zen-like
contemplation which occurs at moments like this, that there was a faint pop in
the air and an entire river valley opened up in front of him.
It's not the sort of thing that ought to happen to a thoughtful lad. Especially
one who has to wash his own uniform.

A breeze from the sea blew into the kingdom, hinting at, no, positively roaring
suggestions of salt, shellfish and sun-soaked tidelines. A few rather puzzled
seabirds wheeled over the necropolis, where the wind scurried among the fallen
masonry and covered with sand the memorials to ancient kings, and the birds said
more with a simple bowel movement than Ozymandias ever managed to say.
The wind had a cool, not unpleasant edge to it. The people out repairing the
damage caused by the gods felt an urge to turn their faces towards it, as fish
in a pond turn towards an influx of clear, fresh water.
No-one worked in the necropolis. Most of the pyramids had blown their upper
levels clean off, and stood smoking gently like recently-extinct volcanoes. Here
and there slabs of black marble littered the landscape. One of them had nearly
decapitated a fine statue of Hat, the Vulture-Headed God.
The ancestors had vanished. No-one was volunteering to go and look for them.
Around midday a ship came up the Djel under full sail. It was a deceptive ship.
It seemed to wallow like a fat and unprotected hippo, and it was only after
watching it for some time that anyone would realise that it was also making
remarkably fast progress. It dropped anchor outside the palace.
After a while, it let down a dinghy.

Teppic sat on the throne and watched the life of the kingdom reassemble itself,
like a smashed mirror that is put together again and reflects the same old light
in new and unexpected ways.
No-one was quite sure on what basis he was on the throne, but no-one else was at
all keen on occupying it and it was a relief to hear instructions issued in a
clear, confident voice. It is amazing what people will obey, if a clear and
confident voice is used, and the kingdom was well used to a clear, confident
voice.
Besides, giving orders stopped him thinking about things. Like, for example,
what would happen next. But at least the gods had gone back to not existing
again, which made it a whole lot easier to believe in them, and the grass didn't
seem to be growing under his feet any more.
Maybe I can put the kingdom together again, he thought. But then what can I do
with it? If only we could find Dios. He always knew what to do, that was the
main thing about him.
A guard pushed his way through the milling throng of priests and nobles.
'Excuse me, your sire,' he said. 'There's a merchant to see you. He says it's
urgent.'
'Not now, man. There's representatives of the Tsortean and Ephebian armies
coming to see me in an hour, and there's a great deal that's got to be done
first. I can't go around seeing any salesmen who happen to be passing. What's he
selling, anyway?'
'Carpets, your sire.'
'Carpets?'
It was Chidder, grinning like half a watermelon, followed by several of the
crew. He walked up the hall staring around at the frescoes and hangings. Because
it was Chidder, he was probably costing them out. By the time he reached the
throne he was drawing a double line under the total.
'Nice place,' he said, wrapping up thousands of years of architectural
accumulation in a mere two syllables. 'You'll never guess what happened, we just
happened to be sailing along the coast and suddenly there was this river. One
minute cliffs, next minute river. There's a funny thing, I thought. I bet old
Teppic's up there somewhere.'
'Where's Ptraci?'
'I knew you were complaining about the lack of the old home comforts, so we
brought you this carpet.'
'I said, where's Ptraci?'
The crew moved aside, leaving a grinning Alfonz to cut the strings around the
carpet and shake it out.
It uncurled swiftly across the floor in a flurry of dust balls and moths and,
eventually, Ptraci, who continued rolling until her head hit Teppic's boot.
He helped her to her feet and tried to pick bits of fluff out of her hair as she
swayed backwards and forwards. She ignored him and turned to Chidder, red with
breathlessness and fury.
'I could have died in there!' she shouted. 'Lots of other things have, by the
smell! And the heat!'
'You said it worked for Queen wossname, Ram-Jam-Hurrah, or whoever,' said
Chidder. 'Don't blame me, at home a necklace or something is usually the thing.'

'I bet she had a decent carpet,' snapped Ptraci. 'Not something stuck in a
bloody hold for six months.'
'You're lucky we had one at all,' said Chidder mildly. 'It was your idea.'
'Huh,' said Ptraci. She turned to Teppic. 'Hallo,' she said. 'This was meant to
be a startling original surprise.'
'It worked,' said Teppic fervently. 'It really worked.'

Chidder lay on a daybed on the palace's veranda, while three handmaidens took
turns to peel grapes for him. A pitcher of beer stood cooling in the shade. He
was grinning amiably.
On a blanket nearby Alfonz lay on his stomach, feeling extremely awkward. The
Mistress of the Women had found out that, in addition to the tattoos on his
forearms, his back was a veritable illustrated history of exotic practices, and
had brought the girls out to be educated. He winced occasionally as her pointer
stabbed at items of particular interest, and stuffed his fingers firmly in his
great, scarred ears to shut out the giggles.
At the far end of the veranda, given privacy by unspoken agreement, Teppic sat
with Ptraci. Things were not going well.
'Everything changed,' he said. 'I'm not going to be king.'
'You are the king,' she said. 'You can't change things.'
'I can. I can abdicate. It's very simple. If I'm not really the king, then I can
go whenever I please. If I am the king, then the king's word is final and I can
abdicate. If we can change sex by decree, we can certainly change station. They
can find a relative to do the job. I must have dozens.'
'The job? Anyway, you said there was only your auntie.'
Teppic frowned. Aunt Cleph-ptah-re was not, on reflection, the kind of monarch a
kingdom needed if it was going to make a fresh start. She had a number of
stoutly-held views on a variety of subjects, but most of them involved the
flaying alive of people she disapproved of. This meant most people under the age
of thirty-five, to start with.
'Well, someone else, then,' he said. 'It shouldn't be difficult, we've always
seemed to have more nobles than really necessary. We'll just have to find one
who has the dream about the cows.'
'Oh, the one where there's fat cows and thin cows?' said Ptraci.
'Yes. It's sort of ancestral.'
'It's a nuisance, I know that much. One of them's always grinning and playing a
wimblehorn.'
'It looks like a trombone to me,' said Teppic.
'It's a ceremonial wimblehorn, if you look closely,' she said.
'Well, I expect everyone sees it a bit differently. I don't think it matters.'
He sighed, and watched the Unnamed unloading. It seemed to have more than the
expected number of feather mattresses, and several of the people wandering
bemusedly down the gangplank were holding toolboxes and lengths of pipe.
'I think you're going to find it difficult,' said Ptraci. 'You can't say "All
those who dream about cows please step forward". It'd give the game away.'
'I can't just hang around until someone happens to mention it, can I? Be
reasonable,' he snapped. 'How many people are likely to say, hey, I had this
funny dream about cows last night? Apart from you, I mean.'
They stared at one another.

'And she's my sister?' said Teppic.
The priests nodded. It was left to Koomi to put it into words. He'd just spent
ten minutes going through the files with the Mistress of the Women.
'Her mother was, er, your late father's favourite,' he said.
'He took a great deal of interest in her upbringing, as you know, and, er, it
would appear that . . . yes. She may be your aunt, of course. The concubines are
never very good at paperwork. But most likely your sister.'
She looked at him with tear-filled eyes.
'That doesn't make any difference, does it?' she whispered.
Teppic stared at his feet.
'Yes,' he said. 'I think it does, really.' He looked up at her. 'But you can be
queen,' he added. He glared at the priests. 'Can't she,' he stated firmly.
The high priests looked at one another. Then they looked at Ptraci, who stood
alone, her shoulders shaking. Small, palace trained, used to taking orders . . .
They looked at Koomi.
'She would be ideal,' he said. There was a murmur of suddenly-confident
agreement.
'There you are then,' said Teppic, consolingly.
She glared at him. He backed away.
'So I'll be off,' he said, 'I don't need to pack anything, it's all right.'
'Just like that?' she said. 'Is that all? Isn't there anything you're going to
say?'
He hesitated, halfway to the door. You could stay, he told himself. It wouldn't
work, though. It'd end up a terrible mess; you'd probably end up splitting the
kingdom between you. Just because fate throws you together doesn't mean fate's
got it right. Anyway, you've been forth.
'Camels are more important than pyramids,' he said slowly. 'It's something we
should always remember.'
He ran for it while she was looking for something to throw.

The sun reached the peak of noon without beetles, and Koomi hovered by the
throne like Hat, the Vulture-Headed God.
'It will please your majesty to confirm my succession as high priest,' he said.
'What?' Ptraci was sitting with her chin cupped in one hand. She waved the other
hand at him. 'Oh. Yes. All right. Fine.'
'No trace has, alas, been found of Dios. We believe he was very close to the
Great Pyramid when it . . . flared.'
Ptraci stared into space. 'You carry on,' she said. Koomi preened.
'The formal coronation will take some time to arrange,' he said, taking the
golden mask. 'However, your graciousness will be pleased to wear the mask of
authority now, for there is much formal business to be concluded.'
She looked at the mask.
'I'm not wearing that,' she said flatly.
Koomi smiled. 'Your majesty will be pleased to wear the mask of authority,' he
said.
'No,' said Ptraci.
Koomi's smile crazed a little around the edges as he attempted to get to grips
with this new concept. He was sure Dios had never had this trouble.
He got over the problem by sidling round it. Sidling had stood him in good stead
all his life; he wasn't going to desert it now. He put the mask down very
carefully on a stool.
'It is the First Hour,' he said. 'Your majesty will wish to conduct the Ritual
of the Ibis, and then graciously grant an audience to the military commanders of
the Tsortean and Ephebian armies. Both are seeking permission to cross the
kingdom. Your majesty will forbid this. At the Second Hour, there will-'
Ptraci sat drumming her fingers on the arms of the throne. Then she took a deep
breath. 'I'm going to have a bath,' she said.
Koomi rocked back and forth a bit.
'It is the First Hour,' he repeated, unable to think of anything else. 'Your
majesty will wish to conduct-'
'Koomi?'
'Yes, O noble queen?'
'Shut up.'
'The Ritual of the Ibis-' Koomi moaned.
'I'm sure you're capable of doing it yourself. You look like a man who does
things himself, if ever I saw one,' she added sourly.
'The commanders of the Tsortean-'
'Tell them,' Ptraci began, and then paused. 'Tell them,' she repeated, 'that
they may both cross. Not one or the other, you understand? Both.'
'But-' Koomi 's understanding managed at last to catch up with his ears - 'that
means they'll end up on opposite sides.'
'Good. And after that you can order some camels. There's a merchant in Ephebe
with a good stock. Check their teeth first. Oh, and then you can ask the captain
of the Unnamed to come and see me. He was explaining to me what a "free port"
is.'
'In your bath, O queen?' said Koomi weakly. He couldn't help noticing, now, how
her voice was changing with each sentence as the veneer of upbringing burned
away under the blowlamp of heredity.
'Nothing wrong with that,' she snapped. 'And see about plumbing. Apparently
pipes are the thing.'
'For the asses' milk?' said Koomi, who was now totally lost in the desert.[32]
'Shut up, Koomi.'
'Yes, O queen,' said Koomi, miserably.
He'd wanted changes. It was just that he'd wanted things to stay the same, as
well.

The sun dropped to the horizon, entirely unaided. For some people, it was
turning out to be quite a good day. The reddened light lit up the three male
members of the Ptaclusp dynasty, as they pored over plans for-
'It's called a bridge,' said IIb.
'Is that like an aqueduct?' said Ptaclusp.
'In reverse, sort of thing,' said IIb. 'The water goes underneath, we go over
the top.'
'Oh. The k- the queen won't like that,' said Ptaclusp.
'The royal family's always been against chaining the holy river with dams and
weirs and suchlike.'
IIb gave a triumphant grin. 'She suggested it,' he said. 'And she graciously
went on to say, could we see to it there's places for people to stand and drop
rocks on the crocodiles.'
'She said that?'
'Large pointy rocks, she said.'
'My word,' said Ptaclusp. He turned to his other son.
'You sure you're all right?' he said.
'Feeling fine, dad,' said IIa.
'No-' Ptaclusp groped 'headaches or anything?'
'Never felt better,' said IIa.
'Only you haven't asked about the cost,' said Ptaclusp. 'I thought perhaps you
were still feeling fl- ill.'
'The queen has been pleased to ask me to have a look at the royal finances,'
said IIa. 'She said priests can't add up.' His recent experiences had left him
with no ill effects other than a profitable tendency to think at right angles to
everyone else, and he sat wreathed in smiles while his mind constructed tariff
rates, docking fees and a complex system of value added tax which would shortly
give the merchant venturers of Ankh-Morpork a nasty shock.
Ptaclusp thought about all the miles of the virgin Djel, totally unbridged. And
there was plenty of dressed stone around now, millions of tons of the stuff. And
you never knew, perhaps on some of those bridges there'd be room for a statue or
two. He had the very thing.
He put his arms around his sons' shoulders.
'Lads,' he said proudly. 'It's looking really quantum.'

The setting sun also shone on Dil and Gern, although in this case it was by a
roundabout route through the lightwell of the palace kitchens. They'd ended up
there for no very obvious reason. It was just that it was so depressing in the
embalming room, all alone.
The kitchen staff worked around them, recognising the air of impenetrable gloom
that surrounded the two embalmers. It was never a very sociable job at the best
of times and embalmers didn't make friends easily. Anyway, there was a
coronation feast to prepare.
They sat amid the bustle, observing the future over a jug of beer.
'I expect,' said Gern, 'that Gwlenda can have a word with her dad.'
'That's it, boy,' said Dil wearily. 'There's a future there. People will always
want garlic.'
'Bloody boring stuff, garlic,' said Gern, with unusual ferocity. 'And you don't
get to meet people. That's what I liked about our job. Always new faces.'
'No more pyramids,' said Dil, without rancour. 'That's what she said. You've
done a good job, Master Dil, she said, but I'm going to drag this country
kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat.'
'Cobra,' said Gern.
'What?'
'It's the Century of the Cobra. Not the Fruitbat.'
'Whatever,' said Dil irritably. He stared miserably into his mug. That was the
trouble now, he reflected. You had to start remembering what century it was.
He glared at a tray of canapes. That was the thing these days. Everyone fiddling
about .
He picked up an olive and turned it over and over in his fingers.
'Can't say I'd feel the same about the old job, mind,' said Gern, draining the
jug, 'but I bet you were proud, master - Dil, I mean. You know, when all your
stitching held up like that.'
Dil, his eyes not leaving the olive, reached dreamily down to his belt and
grasped one of his smaller knives for intricate jobs.
'I said, you must have felt very sorry it was all over,' said Gern.
Dil swivelled around to get more light, and breathed heavily as he concentrated.

'Still, you'll get over it,' said Gern. 'The important thing is not to let it
prey on your mind-'
'Put this stone somewhere,' said Dil.
'Sorry?'
'Put this stone somewhere,' said Dil.
Gern shrugged, and took it out of his fingers.
'Right,' said Dil, his voice suddenly vibrant with purpose.
'Now pass me a piece of red pepper .

And the sun shone on the delta, that little infinity of reed beds and mud banks
where the Djel was laying down the silt of the continent. Wading birds bobbed
for food in the green maze of stems, and billions of zig-zag midges danced over
the brackish water. Here at least time had always passed, as the delta breathed
twice daily the cold, fresh water of the tide.
It was coming in now, the foam-crested cusp of it trickling between the reeds.
Here and there soaked and ancient bandages unwound, wriggled for a while like
incredibly old snakes and then, with the mininum of fuss, dissolved.

THIS IS MOST IRREGULAR.
We 're sorry. It's not our fault.
HOW MANY OF YOU ARE THERE?
More than 1,300, I'm afraid.
VERY WELL, THEN. PLEASE FORM AN ORDERLY QUEUE.

You Bastard was regarding his empty hay rack.
It represented a sub-array in the general cluster 'hay', containing arbitrary
values between zero and K.
It didn't have any hay in it. It might in fact have a negative value of hay in
it, but to the hungry stomach the difference between no hay and minus-hay was
not of particular interest.
It didn't matter how he worked it out, the answer was always the same. It was an
equation of classical simplicity. It had a certain clean elegance which he was
not, currently, in a position to admire.
You Bastard felt ill-used and hard done by. There was nothing particularly
unusual about this, however, since that is the normal state of mind for a camel.
He knelt patiently while Teppic packed the saddlebags.
'We'll avoid Ephebe,' Teppic said, ostensibly to the camel. 'We'll go up the end
of the Circle Sea, perhaps to Quirm or over the Ramtops. There's all sorts of
places. Maybe we'll even look for a few of those cities, eh? I expect you'd like
that.'
It's a mistake trying to cheer up camels. You may as well drop meringues into a
black hole.
The door at the far end of the stable swung open. It was a priest. He looked
rather flustered. The priests had been doing a lot of unaccustomed running
around today.
'Er,' he began. 'Her majesty commands you not to leave the kingdom.'
He coughed.
He said, 'Is there a reply?'
Teppic considered. 'No,' he said, 'I don't think so.'
'So I shall tell her that you will be attending on her presently, shall I?' said
the priest hopefully.
'No.'
'It's all very well for you to say,' said the priest sourly, and slunk off.
He was replaced a few minutes later by Koomi, very red in the face.
'Her majesty requests that you do not leave the kingdom,' he said.
Teppic climbed on to You Bastard's back, and tapped the camel lightly, with a
prod.
'She really means it,' said Koomi.
'I'm sure she does.'
'She could have you thrown to the sacred crocodiles, you know.'
'I haven't seen many of them around today. How are they?' said Teppic, and gave
the camel another thump.
He rode out into the knife-edged daylight and along the packed-earth streets,
which time had turned into a surface harder than stone. They were thronged with
people. And every single person ignored him.
It was a marvellous feeling.
He rode gently along the road to the border and did not stop until he was up in
the escarpment, the valley spreading out behind him. A hot wind off the desert
rattled the syphacia bushes as he tethered You Bastard in the shade, climbed a
little further up the rocks, and looked back.
The valley was old, so old that you could believe it had existed first and had
watched the rest of the world form around it. Teppic lay with his head on his
arms.
Of course, it had made itself old. It had been gently stripping itself of
futures for thousands of years. Now change was hitting it like the ground
hitting an egg.
Dimensions were probably more complicated than people thought. Probably so was
time. Probably so were people, although people could be more predictable.
He watched the column of dust rise outside the palace and work its way through
the city, across the narrow patchwork of fields, disappear for a minute in a
group of palm trees near the escarpment, and reappear at the foot of the slope.
Long before he could see it he knew there'd be a chariot somewhere in the cloud
of sand.
He slid back down the rocks and squatted patiently by the roadside. The chariot
rattled by eventually, halted some way on, turned awkwardly in the narrow space,
and trundled back.
'What will you do?' shouted Ptraci, leaning over the rail.
Teppic bowed.
'And none of that,' she snapped.
'Don't you like being king?'
She hesitated. 'Yes,' she said. 'I do-'
'Of course you do,' said Teppic. 'It's in the blood. In the old days people
would fight like tigers. Brothers against sisters, cousins against uncles.
Dreadful.'
'But you don't have to go! I need you!'
'You've got advisers,' said Teppic mildly.
'I didn't mean that,' she snapped. 'Anyway, there's only Koomi, and he's no
good.'
'You're lucky. I had Dios, and he was good. Koomi will be much better, you can
learn a lot by not listening to what he has to say. You can go a long way with
incompetent advisers. Besides, Chidder will help, I'm sure. He's full of ideas.'

She coloured. 'He advanced a few when we were on the ship.'
'There you are, then. I knew the two of you would get along like a house on
fire.' Screams, flames, people running for safety .
'And you're going back to be an Assassin, are you?' she sneered.
'I don't think so. I've inhumed a pyramid, a pantheon and the entire old
kingdom. It may be worth trying something else. By the way, you haven't been
finding little green shoots springing up wherever you walk, have you?'
'No. What a stupid idea.'
Teppic relaxed. It really was all over, then. 'Don't let the grass grow under
your feet, that's the important thing,' he said. 'And you haven't seen any
seagulls around?'
'There's lots of them today, or didn't you notice?'
'Yes. That's good, I think.'
You Bastard watched them talk a little more, that peculiar trailing-off,
desultory kind of conversation that two people of opposite sexes engage in when
they have something else on their minds. It was much easier with camels, when
the female merely had to check the male's methodology.
Then they kissed in a fairly chaste fashion, insofar as camels are any judge. A
decision was reached.
You Bastard lost interest at this point, and decided to eat his lunch again.
IN THE BEGINNING...
It was peaceful in the valley. The river, its banks as yet untamed, wandered
languidly through thickets of rush and papyrus. Ibises waded in the shallows; in
the deeps, hippos rose and sank slowly, like pickled eggs.
The only sound in the damp silence was the occasional plop of a fish or hiss of
a crocodile.
Dios lay in the mud for some time. He wasn't sure how he'd got there, or why
half his robes were torn off and the other half scorched black. He dimly
recalled a loud noise and a sensation of extreme speed while, at the same time,
he'd been standing still. Right at this moment, he didn't want any answers.
Answers implied questions, and questions never got anyone anywhere. Questions
only spoiled things. The mud was cool and soothing, and he didn't need to know
anything else for a while.
The sun went down. Various nocturnal prowlers wandered near to Dios, and by some
animal instinct decided that he certainly wasn't going to be worth all the
trouble that would accrue from biting his leg off.
The sun rose again. Herons honked. Mist unspooled between the pools, was burned
up as the sky turned from blue to new bronze.
And time unrolled in glorious uneventfulness for Dios until an alien noise took
the silence and did the equivalent of cutting it into small pieces with a rusty
breadknife.
It was a noise, in fact, like a donkey being chainsawed. As sounds went, it was
to melody what a boxful of dates is to high-performance motocross. Nevertheless,
as other voices joined it, similar but different, in a variety of fractured keys
and broken tones, the overall effect was curiously attractive. It had lure. It
had pull. It had a strange suction.
The noise reached a plateau, one pure note made of a succession of discordances,
and then, for just the fraction of a second, the voices split away, each along a
vector .
There was a stirring of the air, a flickering of the sun.
And a dozen camels appeared over the distant hills, skinny and dusty, running
towards the water. Birds erupted from the reeds. Leftover saurians slid smoothly
off the sandbanks. Within a minute the shore was a mass of churned mud as the
knobbly-kneed creatures jostled, nose deep in the water.
Dios sat up, and saw his staff lying in the mud. It was a little scorched, but
still intact, and he noticed what somehow had never been apparent before.
Before? Had there been a before? There had certainly been a dream, something
like a dream .
Each snake had its tail in its mouth.
Down the slope after the camels, his ragged family trailing behind him, was a
small brown figure waving a camel prod. He looked hot and very bewildered.
He looked, in fact, like someone in need of good advice and careful guidance.
Dios's eyes turned back to the staff. It meant something very important, he
knew. He couldn't remember what, though. All he could remember was that it was
very heavy, yet at the same time hard to put down. Very hard to put down. Better
not to pick it up, he thought.
Perhaps just pick it up for a while, and go and explain about gods and why
pyramids were so important. And then he could put it down afterwards, certainly.

Sighing, pulling the remnants of his robes around him to give himself dignity,
using the staff to steady himself, Dios went forth.

The End

    They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their pur­pose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they wanted to.
       This book is dedicated to those fine men.
       And also to Mike Harrison, Mary Gentle, Neil Gaiman and all the others who assisted with and laughed at the idea of L-space; too bad we never used Schrödinger's Paperback ...


   This is where the dragons went.
   They lie ...
   Not dead, not asleep. Not waiting, because waiting implies expectation. Possibly the word we're looking for here is...
   . . . dormant.
   And although the space they occupy isn't like nor­mal space, nevertheless they are packed in tightly. Not a cubic inch there but is filled by a claw, a talon, a scale, the tip of a tail, so the effect is like one of those trick drawings and your eyeballs eventually realise that the space between each dragon is, in fact, another dragon:
   They could put you in mind of a can of sardines, if you thought sardines were huge and scaly and proud and arrogant.
   And presumably, somewhere, there's the key.
   In another space entirely, it was early morning in Ankh-Morpork, oldest and greatest and grubbiest of cities. A thin drizzle dripped from the grey sky and punctuated the river mist that coiled among the streets. Rats of various species went about their noc­turnal occasions. Under night's damp cloak assassins assassinated, thieves thieved, hussies hustled. And so on. And drunken Captain Vimes of the Night Watch staggered slowly down the street, folded gently into the gutter outside the Watch House and lay there while, above him, strange letters made of light sizzled in the damp and changed colour . . .
   The city wasa, wasa, wasa wossname. Thing. Woman. Thass what it was. Woman. Roaring, an­cient, centuries old. Strung you along, let you fall in thingy, love, with her, then kicked you inna, inna, thingy. Thingy, in your mouth. Tongue. Tonsils. Teeth. That's what it, she, did. She wasa . . . thing, you know, lady dog. Puppy. Hen. Bitch. And then you hated her and, and just when you thought you'd got her, it, out of your, your, whatever, then she opened her great booming rotten heart to you, caught you off bal, bal, bal, thing. Ance. Yeah. Thassit. Never knew where where you stood. Lay. Only thing you were sure of, you couldn't let her go. Because, because she was yours, all you had, even in her gutters . . .
 
   Damp darkness shrouded the venerable buildings of Unseen University, premier college of wizardry. The only light was a faint octarine flicker from the tiny windows of the new High Energy Magic building, where keen-edged minds were probing the very fabric of the universe, whether it liked it or not.
   And there was light, of course, in the Library.
   The Library was the greatest assemblage of magical texts anywhere in the multiverse. Thousands of vol­umes of occult lore weighted its shelves.
   It was said that, since vast amounts of magic can seriously distort the mundane world, the Library did not obey the normal rules of space and time. It was said that it went on forever. It was said that you could wander for days among the distant shelves, that there were lost tribes of research students somewhere in there, that strange things lurked in forgotten alcoves and were preyed on by other things that were even stranger.[1]
   Wise students in search of more distant volumes took care to leave chalk marks on the shelves as they roamed deeper into the fusty darkness, and told friends to come looking for them if they weren't back by supper.
   And, because magic can only loosely be bound, the Library books themselves were more than mere pulped wood and paper.
   Raw magic crackled from their spines, earthing it­self harmlessly in the copper rails nailed to every shelf for that very purpose. Faint traceries of blue fire crawled across the bookcases and there was a sound, a papery whispering, such as might come from a col­ony of roosting starlings. In the silence of the night the books talked to one another.
   There was also the sound of someone snoring.
   The light from the shelves didn't so much illuminate as highlight the darkness, but by its violet flicker a watcher might just have identified an ancient and bat­tered desk right under the central dome.
   The snoring was coming from underneath it, where a piece of tattered blanket barely covered what looked like a heap of sandbags but was in fact an adult male orangutan.
   It was the Librarian.
   Not many people these days remarked upon the fact that he was an ape. The change had been brought about by a magical accident, always a possibility where so many powerful books are kept together, and he was considered to have got off lightly. After all, he was still basically the same shape. And he had been allowed to keep his job, which he was rather good at, although 'allowed' is not really the right word. It was the way he could roll his upper lip back to reveal more incredibly yellow teeth than any other mouth the Uni­versity Council had ever seen before that somehow made sure the matter was never really raised.
   But now there was another sound, the alien sound of a door creaking open. Footsteps padded across the floor and disappeared amongst the clustering shelves. The books rustled indignantly, and some of the larger grimoires rattled their chains.
   The Librarian slept on, lulled by the whispering of the rain.
   In the embrace of his gutter, half a mile away, Cap­tain Vimes of the Night Watch opened his mouth and started to sing.
 
   Now a black-robed figure scurried through the midnight streets, ducking from doorway to doorway, and reached a grim and forbidding portal. No mere doorway got that grim without effort, one felt. It looked as though the ar­chitect had been called in and given specific instructions. We want something eldritch in dark oak, he'd been told. So put an unpleasant gargoyle thing over the archway, give it a slam like the footfall of a giant and make it clear to everyone, in fact, that this isn't the kind of door that goes 'ding-dong' when you press the bell.
   The figure rapped a complex code on the dark woodwork. A tiny barred hatch opened and one sus­picious eye peered out.
   " 'The significant owl hoots in the night,' " said the visitor, trying to wring the rainwater out of its robe.
   " 'Yet many grey lords go sadly to the masterless men,' " intoned a voice on the other side of the grille.
   " 'Hooray, horray for the spinster's sister's daugh­ter,' " countered the dripping figure.
   " 'To the axeman, all supplicants are the same height.' "
   " 'Yet verily, the rose is within the thorn.' "
   " 'The good mother makes bean soup for the errant boy,' " said the voice behind the door.
   There was a pause, broken only by the sound of the rain. Then the visitor said, "What?"
   " 'The good mother makes bean soup for the errant boy.' "
   There was another, longer pause. Then the damp figure said, "Are you sure the ill-built tower doesn't tremble mightily at a butterfly's passage?"
   "Nope. Bean soup it is. I'm sorry."
   The rain hissed down relentlessly in the embar­rassed silence.
   "What about the caged whale?" said the soaking visitor, trying to squeeze into what little shelter the dread portal offered.
   "What about it?"
   "It should know nothing of the mighty deeps, if you must know."
   "Oh, the caged whale. You want the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night. Three doors down."
   "Who're you, then?"
   "We're the Illuminated and Ancient Brethren of Ee."
   "I thought you met over in Treacle Street,'' said the damp man, after a while.
   "Yeah, well. You know how it is. The fretwork club have the room Tuesdays. There was a bit of a mix-up."
   "Oh? Well, thanks anyway."
   "My pleasure." The little door slammed shut.
   The robed figure glared at it for a moment, and then splashed further down the street. There was indeed another portal there. The builder hadn't bothered to change the design much.
   He knocked. The little barred hatch shot back.
   "Yes?"
   "Look, 'The significant owl hoots in the night', all right?"
   " 'Yet many grey lords go sadly to the masterless men.' "
   " 'Hooray, horray for the spinster's sister's daugh­ter', okay?' "
   " 'To the axeman, all supplicants are the same height.' "
   " 'Yet verily, the rose is within the thorn.' It's piss­ing down out here. You do know that, don't you?"
   "Yes," said the voice, in the tones of one who in­deed does know it, and is not the one standing in it.
   The visitor sighed.
   " 'The caged whale knows nothing of the mighty deeps,' " he said. "If it makes you any happier."
   " 'The ill-built tower trembles mightily at a but­terfly's passage.' "
   The supplicant grabbed the bars of the window, pulled himself up to it, and hissed: "Now let us in, I'm soaked."
   There was another damp pause.
   "These deeps ... did you say mighty or nightly?"
   "Mighty, I said. Mighty deeps. On account of be­ing, you know, deep. It's me, Brother Fingers."
   "It sounded like nightly to me," said the invisible doorkeeper cautiously.
   "Look, do you want the bloody book or not? I don't have to do this. I could be at home in bed."
   "You sure it was mighty?"
   "Listen, I know how deep the bloody deeps are all right," said Brother Fingers urgently. "I knew how mighty they were when you were a perishing neo­phyte. Now will you open this door?"
   "Well . . . all right."
   There was the sound of bolts sliding back. Then the voice said, "Would you mind giving it a push? The Door of Knowledge Through Which the Untutored May Not Pass sticks something wicked in the damp."
   Brother Fingers put his shoulder to it, forced his way through, gave Brother Doorkeeper a dirty look, and hurried within.
   The others were waiting for him in the Inner Sanc­tum, standing around with the sheepish air of people not normally accustomed to wearing sinister hooded black robes. The Supreme Grand Master nodded at him.
   "Brother Fingers, isn't it?"
   "Yes, Supreme Grand Master."
   "Do you have that which you were sent to get?"
   Brother Fingers pulled a package from under his robe.
   "Just where I said it would be," he said. "No prob­lem."
   "Well done, Brother Fingers."
   "Thank you, Supreme Grand Master."
   The Supreme Grand Master rapped his gavel for at­tention. The room shuffled into some sort of circle.
   "I call the Unique and Supreme Lodge of the Elu­cidated Brethren to order," he intoned. "Is the Door of Knowledge sealed fast against heretics and knowlessmen?"
   "Stuck solid," said Brother Doorkeeper. "It's the damp. I'll bring my plane in next week, soon have it-"
   "All right, all right," said the Supreme Grand Mas­ter testily. "Just a yes would have done. Is the triple circle well and truly traced? Art all here who Art Here? And it be well for an knowlessman that he should not be here, for he would be taken from this place and his gaskin slit, his moules sown to the four winds, his welchet torn asunder with many hooks and his figgin placed upon a spike… yes what is it?"
   "Sorry, did you say Elucidated Brethren?"
   The Supreme Grand Master glared at the solitary figure with its hand up.
   "Yea, the Elucidated Brethren, guardian of the sa­cred knowledge since a time no man may wot of-"
   "Last February," said Brother Doorkeeper help­fully. The Supreme Grand Master felt that Brother Doorkeeper had never really got the hang of things.
   "Sorry. Sorry. Sorry," said the worried figure. "Wrong society, I'm afraid. Must have taken a wrong turning. I'll just be going, if you'll excuse me . . ."
   "And his figgin placed upon a spike," repeated the Supreme Grand Master pointedly, against a back­ground of damp wooden noises as Brother Doorkeeper tried to get the dread portal open. "Are we quite fin­ished? Any more knowlessmen happened to drop in on their way somewhere else?" he added with bitter sarcasm. "Right. Fine. So glad. I suppose it's too much to ask if the Four Watchtowers are secured? Oh, good. And the Trouser of Sanctity, has anyone both­ered to shrive it? Oh, you did. Properly? I'll check, you know ... all right. And have the windows been fastened with the Red Cords of Intellect, in accor­dance with ancient prescription? Good. Now perhaps we can get on with it."
   With the slightly miffed air of one who has run their finger along a daughter-in-law's top shelf and found against all expectation that it is sparkling clean, the Grand Master got on with it.
   What a shower, he told himself. A bunch of incom­petents no other secret society would touch with a ten-foot Scepter of Authority. The sort to dislocate their fingers with even the simplest secret handshake.
   But incompetents with possibilities, nevertheless. Let the other societies take the skilled, the hopefuls, the ambitious, the self-confident. He'd take the whin­ing resentful ones, the ones with a bellyful of spite and bile, the ones who knew they could make it big if only they'd been given the chance. Give him the ones in which the floods of venom and vindictiveness were dammed up behind thin walls of ineptitude and low-grade paranoia.
   And stupidity, too. They've all sworn the oath, he thought, but not a man jack of 'em has even asked what a figgin is.
   "Brethren," he said. "Tonight we have matters of profound importance to discuss. The good gover­nance, nay, the very future of Ankh-Morpork lies in our hands."
   They leaned closer. The Supreme Grand Master felt the beginnings of the old thrill of power. They were hanging on his words. This was a feeling worth dress­ing up in bloody silly robes for.
   "Do we not well know that the city is in thrall to corrupt men, who wax fat on their ill-gotten gains, while better men are held back and forced into virtual servitude?"
   "We certainly do!" said Brother Doorkeeper vehe­mently, when they'd had time to translate this men­tally. "Only last week, down at the Bakers' Guild, I tried to point out to Master Critchley that-"
   It wasn't eye contact, because the Supreme Grand Master had made sure the Brethren's hoods shrouded their faces in mystic darkness, but nevertheless he managed to silence Brother Doorkeeper by dint of sheer outraged silence.
   "Yet it was not always thus," the Supreme Grand Master continued. "There was once a golden age, when those worthy of command and respect were justly rewarded. An age when Ankh-Morpork wasn't simply a big city but a great one. An age of chivalry. An age when…yes, Brother Watchtower?"
   A bulky robed figure lowered its hand. "Are you talking about when we had kings?"
   "Well done, Brother," said the Supreme Grand Master, slightly annoyed at this unusual evidence of intelligence. "And-"
   "But that was all sorted out hundreds of years ago," said Brother Watchtower. "Wasn't there this great bat­tle, or something? And since then we've just had the ruling lords, like the Patrician."
   "Yes, very good, Brother Watchtower."
   "There aren't any more kings, is the point I'm try­ing to make," said Brother Watchtower helpfully.
   "As Brother Watchtower says, the line of-"
   "It was you talking about chivalry that give me the clue," said Brother Watchtower.
   "Quite so, and-"
   "You get that with kings, chivalry," said Brother Watchtower happily. "And knights. And they used to have these-"
   “However,'' said the Supreme Grand Master sharply, "it may well be that the line of the kings of Ankh is not as defunct as hitherto imagined, and that progeny of the line exists even now. Thus my re­searches among the ancient scrolls do indicate."
   He stood back expectantly. There didn't seem to be the effect he'd expected, however. Probably they can manage 'defunct', he thought, but I ought to have drawn the line at 'progeny'.
   Brother Watchtower had his hand up again.
   "Yes?"
   "You saying there's some sort of heir to the throne hanging around somewhere?" said Brother Watchtower.
   "This may be the case, yes."
   "Yeah. They do that, you know," said Brother Watchtower knowledgeably. "Happens all the time. You read about it. Scions, they're called. They go lurking around in the distant wildernesses for ages, handing down the secret sword and birthmark and so forth from generation to generation. Then just when the old kingdom needs them, they turn up and turf out any usurpers that happen to be around. And then there's general rejoicing."
   The Supreme Grand Master felt his own mouth drop open. He hadn't expected it to be as easy as this.
   "Yes, all right," said a figure the Supreme Grand Master knew to be Brother Plasterer. "But so what? Let's say a scion turns up, walks up to the Patrician, says 'What ho, I'm king, here's the birthmark as per spec, now bugger off'. What's he got then? Life ex­pectancy of maybe two minutes, that's what."
   "You don't listen, " said Brother Watchtower. "The thing is, the scion has to arrive when the kingdom is threatened, doesn't he? Then everyone can see, right? Then he gets carried off to the palace, cures a few people, announces a half-holiday, hands round a bit of treasure, and Bob's your uncle."
   "He has to marry a princess, too," said Brother Doorkeeper. ' 'On account of him being a swineherd.''
   They looked at him.
   "Who said anything about him being a swineherd?" said Brother Watchtower. "I never said he was a swineherd. What's this about swineherds?"
   "He's got a point, though," said Brother Plasterer. "He's generally a swineherd or a forester or similar, your basic scion. It's to do with being in wossname. Cognito. They've got to appear to be of, you know, humble origins."
   "Nothing special about humble origins," said a very small Brother, who seemed to consist entirely of a little perambulatory black robe with halitosis. "I've got lots of humble origins. In my family we thought swineherding was a posh job."
   "But your family doesn't have the blood of kings, Brother Dunnykin,'' said Brother Plasterer.
   "We might of…" said Brother Dunnykin sulkily.
   "Right, then," said Brother Watchtower grudg­ingly. "Fair enough. But at the essential moment, see your genuine kings throw back their cloak and say 'Lo!' and their essential kingnessness shines through."
   "How, exactly?" said Brother Doorkeeper.
   "….might of got the blood of kings," muttered Brother Dunnykin. "Got no right saying I might not have got the blood of…"
   "Look, it just does, okay? You just know it when you see it."
   "But before that they've got to save the kingdom," said Brother Plasterer.
   "Oh, yes," said Brother Watchtower heavily. "That's the main thing, is that."
   "What from, then?"
   "…got as much right as anyone to might have the blood of kings…''
   "The Patrician?" said Brother Doorkeeper.
   Brother Watchtower, as the sudden authority on the ways of royalty, shook his head.
   "I dunno that the Patrician is a threat, exactly," he said. "He's not your actual tyrant, as such. Not as bad as some we've had. I mean, he doesn't actually oppress.''
   "I get oppressed all the time," said Brother Door­keeper. "Master Critchley, where I work, he op­presses me morning, noon and night, shouting at me and everything. And the woman in the vegetable shop, she oppresses me all the time."
   "That's right," said Brother Plasterer. "My land­lord oppresses me something wicked. Banging on the door and going on and on about all the rent I allegedly owe, which is a total lie. And the people next door oppress me all night long. I tell them, I work all day, a man's got to have some time to learn to play the tuba. That's oppression, that is. If I'm not under the heel of the oppressor, I don't know who is."
   "Put like that," said Brother Watchtower slowly, "I reckon my brother-in-law is oppressing me all the time with having this new horse and buggy he's been and bought. I haven't got one. I mean, where's the justice in that? I bet a king wouldn't let that sort of oppression go on, people's wives oppressing 'em with why haven't they got a new coach like our Rodney and that."
   The Supreme Grand Master listened to this with a slightly light-headed feeling. It was as if he'd known that there were such things as avalanches, but had never dreamed when he dropped the little snowball on top of the mountain that it could lead to such aston­ishing results. He was hardly having to egg them on at all.
   "I bet a king'd have something to say about land­lords," said Brother Plasterer.
   "And he'd outlaw people with showy coaches," said Brother Watchtower. "Probably bought with stolen money, too, I reckon."
   "I think," said the Supreme Grand Master, tweak­ing things a little, "that a wise king would only, as it were, outlaw showy coaches for the undeserving. "
   There was a thoughtful pause in the conversation as the assembled Brethren mentally divided the universe into the deserving and the undeserving, and put them­selves on the appropriate side.
   "It'd be only fair," said Brother Watchtower slowly. "But Brother Plasterer was right, really. I can't see a scion manifesting his destiny just because Brother Doorkeeper thinks the woman in the vegetable shop keeps giving him funny looks. No offense."
   "And bloody short weight," said Brother Door­keeper. "And she…"
   "Yes, yes, yes," said the Supreme Grand Master. "Truly the right-thinking folk of Ankh-Morpork are beneath the heel of the oppressors. However, a king generally reveals himself in rather more dramatic cir­cumstances. Like a war, for example."
   Things were going well. Surely, for all their self-centred stupidity, one of them would be bright enough to make the suggestion?
   "There used to be some old prophecy or some­thing," said Brother Plasterer. "My grandad told me." His eyes glazed with the effort of dramatic re­call. " 'Yea, the king will come bringing Law and Justice, and know nothing but the Truth, and Protect and Serve the People with his Sword.' You don't all have to look at me like that, I didn't make it up."
   "Oh, we all know that one. And a fat lot of good that'd be," said Brother Watchtower. "I mean, what does he do, ride in with Law and Truth and so on like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Hallo every­one," he squeaked, "I'm the king, and that's Truth over there, watering his horse. Not very practical, is it? Nah. You can't trust old legends."
   "Why not?" said Brother Dunnykin, in a peeved voice.
   " 'Cos they're legendary. That's how you can tell," said Brother Watchtower.
   "Sleeping princesses is a good one," said Brother Plasterer. "Only a king can wake 'em up."
   "Don't be daft," said Brother Watchtower severely. "We haven't got a king, so we can't have princesses. Stands to reason."
   "Of course, in the old days it was easy," said Brother Doorkeeper happily.
   "Why?"
   "He just had to kill a dragon."
   The Supreme Grand Master clapped his hands to­gether and offered a silent prayer to any god who hap­pened to be listening. He'd been right about these people. Sooner or later their rambling little minds took them where you wanted them to go.
   "What an interesting idea," he trilled.
   "Wouldn't work," said Brother Watchtower dourly. "There ain't no big dragons now."
   "There could be."
   The Supreme Grand Master cracked his knuckles.
   "Come again?" said Brother Watchtower.
   "I said there could be."
   There was a nervous laugh from the depths of Brother Watchtower's cowl.
   "What, the real thing? Great big scales and wings?"
   "Yes."
   "Breath like a blast furnace."
   "Yes."
   "Them big claw things on its feet?"
   "Talons? Oh, yes. As many as you want."
   "What do you mean, as many as I want?"
   "I would hope it's self-explanatory, Brother Watch-tower. If you want dragons, you can have dragons. You can bring a dragon here. Now. Into the city."
   "Me?"
   "All of you. I mean us," said the Supreme Grand Master.
   Brother Watchtower hesitated. "Well, I don't know if that's a very good-"
   "And it would obey your every command."
   That stopped them. That pulled them up. That dropped in front of their weasely little minds like a lump of meat in a dog pound.
   "Can you just repeat that?" said Brother Plasterer slowly.
   "You can control it. You can make it do whatever you want."
   "What? A real dragon?"
   The Supreme Grand Master's eyes rolled in the pri­vacy of his hood.
   "Yes, a real one. Not a little pet swamp dragon. The genuine article."
   "But I thought they were, you know . . . miffs."
   The Supreme Grand master leaned forward.
   "'They were myths and they were real," he said loudly. "Both a wave and a particle."
   "You've lost me there," said Brother Plasterer.
   "I will demonstrate, then. The book please, Brother Fingers. Thank you. Brethren, I must tell you that when I was undergoing my tuition by the Secret Mas­ters…"
   "The what, Supreme Grand Master?" said Brother Plasterer.
   "Why don't you listen? You never listen. He said the Secret Masters!" said Brother Watchtower. "You know, the venerable sages what live on some mountain and secretly run everything and taught him all this lore and that, and can walk on fires and that. He told us last week. He's going to teach us, aren't you, Supreme Grand Master," he finished obsequiously.
   "Oh, the Secret Masters," said Brother Plasterer. "Sorry. It's these mystic hoods. Sorry. Secret. I re­member."
   But when I rule the city, the Supreme Grand Master said to himself, there is going to be none of this. I shall form a new secret society of keen-minded and intelligent men, although not too intelligent of course, not too intelligent. And we will overthrow the cold tyrant and we will usher in a new age of enlightenment and fraternity and humanism and Ankh-Morpork will become a Utopia and people like Brother Plasterer will be roasted over slow fires if I have any say in the mat­ter, which I will. And his figgin…[2]
   "When I was, as I said, undergoing my tuition by the Secret Masters…" he continued.
   "That was where they told you had to walk on rice-paper, wasn't it," said Brother Watchtower con­versationally. "I always thought that was a good bit. I've been saving it off the bottom of my macaroons ever since. Amazing, really. I can walk on it no trou­ble. Shows what being in a proper secret society does for you, does that."
   When he is on the griddle, the Supreme Grand Mas­ter thought, Brother Plasterer will not be lonely.
   "Your footfalls on the road of enlightenment are an example to us all, Brother Watchtower," he said. "If I may continue, however - among the many se­crets…"
   "- from the Heart of Being -" said Brother Watch-tower approvingly.
   "…from the Heart, as Brother Watchtower says, of Being, was the current location of the noble dragons. The belief that they died out is quite wrong. They sim­ply found a new evolutionary niche. And they can be summoned from it. This book," he flourished it, "gives specific instructions."
   "It's just in a book?" said Brother Plasterer.
   "No ordinary book. This is the only copy. It has taken me years to track it down," said the Supreme Grand Master. "It's in the handwriting of Tubal de Malachite, a great student of dragon lore. His actual handwriting. He summoned dragons of all sizes. And so can you."
   There was another long, awkward silence.
   "Um," said Brother Doorkeeper.
   "Sounds a bit like, you know . . . magic to me," said Brother Watchtower, in the nervous tone of the man who has spotted which cup the pea is hidden un­der but doesn't like to say. "I mean, not wishing to question your supreme wisdomship and that, but ... well . . . you know . . . magic . . ."
   His voice trailed off.
   "Yeah," said Brother Plasterer uncomfortably.
   "It's, er, the wizards, see," said Brother Fingers. "You prob'ly dint know this, when you was banged up with them venerable herberts on their mountain, but the wizards round here come down on you like a ton of bricks if they catches you doin' anything like that."
   "Demarcation, they call it," said Brother Plasterer.
   "Like, I don't go around fiddling with the mystic in­terleaved wossnames of causality, and they don't do any plastering."
   "I fail to see the problem," said the Supreme Grand Master. In fact, he saw it all too clearly. This was the last hurdle. Help their tiny little minds over this, and he held the world in the palm of his hand. Their stupefyingly unintelligent self-interest hadn't let him down so far, surely it couldn't fail him now . . .
   The Brethren shuffled uneasily. Then Brother Dunnykin spoke.
   "Huh, wizards. What do they know about a day's work?"
   The Supreme Grand master breathed deeply. Ah . , .
   The air of mean-minded resentfulness thickened no­ticeably.
   "Nothing, and that's a fact," said Brother Fingers. "Goin' around with their noses in the air,too good for the likes o'us. I used to see 'em when I worked up the University. Backsides a mile wide, I'm telling you. Catch 'em doing a job of honest toil?"
   "Like thieving, you mean?" said Brother Watchtower, who had never liked Brother Fingers much.
   "O'course, they tell you," Brother Fingers went on, pointedly ignoring the comment, "that you shouldn't go round doin' magic on account of only them knowin' about not disturbin' the universal harmony and what­not. Load of rubbish, in my opinion."
   "We-ell," said Brother Plasterer, "I dunno, really. I mean, you get the mix wrong, you just got a lot of damp plaster round your ankles. But you get a bit of magic wrong, and they say ghastly things comes out the woodwork and snitches you right up."
   "Yeah, but it's the wizards that say that," said Brother Watchtower thoughtfully. "Never could stand them myself, to tell you the truth. Could be they're on to a good thing and don't want the rest of us to find out. It's only waving your arms and chanting, when all's said and done."
   The Brethren considered this. It sounded plausible. If they were on to a good thing, they certainly wouldn't want anyone else muscling in.
   The Supreme Grand Master decided that the time was ripe.
   "Then we are agreed, Brethren? You are prepared to practice magic?"
   "Oh, practice," said Brother Plaster, relieved. "I don't mind practicing. So long as we don't have to do it for real…"
   The Supreme Grand Master thumped the book.
   "I mean carry out real spells! Put the city back on the right lines! Summon a dragon!" he shouted.
   They took a step back. Then Brother Doorkeeper said, "And then, if we get this dragon, the rightful king'll turn up, just like that?"
   "Yes!" said the Supreme Grand Master.
   "I can see that," said Brother Watchtower supportively.
   "Stands to reason. Because of destiny and the gnom­ic workings of fate."
   There was a moment's hesitation, and then a general nodding of cowls. Only Brother Plasterer looked vaguely unhappy.
   "We-ell," he said. "It won't get out of hand, will it?"
   "I assure you, Brother Plasterer, that you can give it up any time you like," said the Supreme Grand Master smoothly.
   "Well ... all right," said the reluctant Brother. "Just for a bit, then. Could we get it to stay here long enough to burn down, for example, any oppressive vegetable shops?" Ah. . .
   He'd won. There'd be dragons again. And a king again. Not like the old kings. A king who would do what he was told.
   "That," said the Supreme Grand Master, "depends on how much help you can be. We shall need, initially, any items of magic you can bring ..."
   It might not be a good idea to let them see that the last half of de Malachite's book was a charred lump. The man was clearly not up to it.
   He could do a lot better. And absolutely no one would be able to stop him.
   Thunder rolled . . .
 
   It is said that the gods play games with the lives of men. But what games, and why, and the identities of the actual pawns, and what the game is, and what the rules are - who knows?
   Best not to speculate.
   Thunder rolled. . . .
   It rolled a six.
 

 Now pull back briefly from the dripping streets of Ankh-Morpork, pan across the morning mists of the Disc, and focus in again on a young man heading for the city with all the openness, sincerity and innocence of purpose of an iceberg drifting into a major shipping lane.
   The young man is called Carrot. This is not because of his hair, which his father has always clipped short for reasons of Hygiene. It is because of his shape.
   It is the kind of tapering shape a boy gets through clean living, healthy eating, and good mountain air in huge lungfuls. When he flexes his shoulder muscles, other muscles have to move out of the way first.
   He is also bearing a sword presented to him in mys­terious circumstances. Very mysterious circum­stances. Surprisingly, therefore, there is something very unexpected about this sword. It isn't magical. It hasn't got a name. When you wield it you don't get a feeling of power, you just get blisters; you could be­lieve it was a sword that had been used so much that it had ceased to be anything other than a quintessential sword, a long piece of metal with very sharp edges. And it hasn't got destiny written all over it. It's practically unique, in fact.
 
   Thunder rolled.
   The gutters of the city gurgled softly as the detritus of the night was carried along, in some cases protest­ing feebly.
   When it came to the recumbent figure of Captain Vimes, the water diverted and flowed around him in two streams. Vimes opened his eyes. There was a mo­ment of empty peace before memory hit him like a shovel.
   It had been a bad day for the Watch. There had been the funeral of Herbert Gaskin, for one thing. Poor old Gaskin. He had broken one of the fundamental rules of being a guard. It wasn't the sort of rule that some­one like Gaskin could break twice. And so he'd been lowered into the sodden ground with the rain drum­ming on his coffin and no one present to mourn him but the three surviving members of the Night Watch, the most despised group of men in the entire city. Ser­geant Colon had been in tears. Poor old Gaskin.
   Poor old Vimes, Vimes thought.
   Poor old Vimes, here in gutter. But that's where he started. Poor old Vimes, with the water swirling in under breastplate. Poor old Vimes, watching rest of gutter's contents ooze by. Prob'ly even poor old Gaskin has got better view now, he thought.
   Lessee . . . he'd gone off after the funeral and got drunk. No, not drunk, another word, ended with 'er'. Drunker, that was it. Because world all twisted up and wrong, like distorted glass, only came back into focus if you looked at it through bottom of bottle.
   Something else now, what was it?…
   Oh, yes. Night-time. Time for duty. Not for Gaskin, though. Have to get new fellow. New fellow coming anyway, wasn't that it? Some stick from the hicks. Written letter. Some tick from the snicks . . .
   Vimes gave up, and slumped back. The gutter con­tinued to swirl.
   Overhead, the lighted letters fizzed and flickered in the rain.
 
   It wasn't only the fresh mountain air that had given Carrot his huge physique. Being brought up in a gold mine run by dwarfs and working a twelve-hour day hauling wagons to the surface must have helped.
   He walked with a stoop. What will do that is being brought up in a gold mine run by dwarfs who thought that five feet was a good height for a ceiling.
   He'd always known he was different. More bruised for one thing. And then one day his father had come up to him or, rather, come up to his waist, and told him that he was not, in fact, as he had always believed, a dwarf.
   It's a terrible thing to be nearly sixteen and the wrong species.
   "We didn't like to say so before, son," said his father. "We thought you'd grow out of it, see."
   "Grow out of what?" said Carrot.
   "Growing. But now your mother thinks, that is, we both think, it's time you went out among your own kind. I mean, it's not fair, keeping you cooped up here without company of your own height." His father twiddled a loose rivet on his helmet, a sure sign that he was worried. "Er," he added.
   "But you're my kind!" said Carrot desperately.
   "In a manner of speaking, yes," said his father. "In another manner of speaking, which is a rather more precise and accurate manner of speaking, no. It's all this genetics business, you see. So it might be a very good idea if you were to go out and see some­thing of the world.''
   "What, for good?"
   "Oh, no! No. Of course not. Come back and visit whenever you like. But, well, a lad your age, stuck down here . . . It's not right. You know. I mean. Not a child any more. Having to shuffle around on your knees most of the time, and everything. It's not right."
   ' 'What is my own kind, then?'' said Carrot, bewil­dered.
   The old dwarf took a deep breath. "You're human," he said.
   ' 'What, like Mr Varneshi?'' Mr Varneshi drove an ox-cart up the mountain trails once a week, to trade things for gold. "One of the Big People?"
   "You're six foot six, lad. He's only five foot." The dwarf twiddled the loose rivet again. "You see how it is."
   "Yes, but - but maybe I'm just tall for my height," said Carrot desperately. "After all, if you can have short humans, can't you have tall dwarfs?"
   His father patted him companionably on the back of the knees.
   "You've got to face facts, boy. You'd be much more at home up on the surface. It's in your blood. The roof isn't so low, either." You can't keep knocking yourself out on the sky, he told himself.
   "Hold on," said Carrot, his honest brow wrinkling with the effort of calculation. "You're a dwarf, right? And mam's a dwarf. So I should be a dwarf, too. Fact of life."
   The dwarf sighed. He'd hoped to creep up on this, over a period of months maybe, sort of break it to him gently, but there wasn't any time any more.
   "Sit down, lad," he said. Carrot sat.
   "The thing is," he said wretchedly, when the boy's big honest face was a little nearer his own, "we found you in the woods one day. Toddling about near one of the tracks . . . um." The loose rivet squeaked. The king plunged on.
   "Thing is, you see ... there were these carts. On fire, as you might say. And dead people. Um, yes. Extremely dead people. Because of bandits. It was a bad winter that winter, there were all sorts coming into the hills ... So we took you in, of course, and then, well, it was a long winter, like I said, and your mam got used to you, and, well, we never got around to asking Varneshi to make inquiries. That's the long and the short of it."
   Carrot took this fairly calmly, mostly because he didn't understand nearly all of it. Besides, as far as he was aware, being found toddling in the woods was the normal method of childbirth. A dwarf is not con­sidered old enough to have the technical processes explained to him[3] until he has reached puberty.[4]
   "All right, dad," he said, and leaned down so as to be level with the dwarf's ear. "But you know, me and-you know Minty Rocksmacker? She's really beautiful, dad, got a beard as soft as a, a, a very soft thing-we've got an understanding, and-"
   "Yes," said the dwarf, coldly, "I know. Her fath­er's had a word with me." So did her mother with your mother, he added silently, and then she had a word with me. Lots of words.
   "It's not that they don't like you, you're a steady lad and a fine worker, you'd make a good son-in-law. Four good sons-in-law. That's the trouble. And she's only sixty, anyway. It's not proper. It's not right."
   He'd heard about children being reared by wolves.
   He wondered whether the leader of the pack ever had to sort out something tricky like this. Perhaps he'd have to take him into a quiet clearing somewhere and say, Look, son, you might have wondered why you're not as hairy as everyone else . . .
   He'd discussed it with Varneshi. A good solid man, Varneshi. Of course, he'd known the man's father. And his grandfather, now he came to think about it. Hu­mans didn't seem to last long, it was probably all the effort of pumping blood up that high.
   "Got a problem there, king.[5] Right enough," the old man had said, as they shared a nip of spirits on a bench outside Shaft #2.
   "He's a good lad, mind you," said the king. "Sound character. Honest. Not exactly brilliant, but you tell him to do something, he don't rest until he's done it. Obedient."
   "You could chop his legs off," said Varneshi.
   "It's not his legs that's going to be the problem," said the king darkly.
   "Ah. Yes. Well, in that case you could…"
   "No."
   "No," agreed Varneshi, thoughtfully. "Hmm. Well, then what you should do is, you should send him away for a bit. Let him mix a bit with humans." He sat back. "What you've got here, king, is a duck," he added, in knowledgeable tones.
   "I don't think I should tell him that. He's refusing to believe he's a human as it is."
   "What I mean is, a duck brought up among chick­ens. Well-known farmyard phenomenon. Finds it can't bloody well peck and doesn't know what swimming is." The king listened politely. Dwarfs don't go in much for agriculture. "But you send him off to see a lot of other ducks, let him get his feet wet, and he won't go running around after bantams any more. And Bob's your uncle. "
   Varneshi sat back and looked rather pleased with himself.
   When you spend a large part of your life under­ground, you develop a very literal mind. Dwarfs have no use for metaphor and simile. Rocks are hard, the darkness is dark. Start messing around with descrip­tions like that and you're in big trouble, is their motto. But after two hundred years of talking to humans the king had, as it were, developed a painstaking mental toolkit which was nearly adequate for the job of un­derstanding them.
   "Surely Bjorn Stronginthearm is my uncle, " he pointed out, slowly.
   "Same thing. "
   There was a pause while the king subjected this to careful analysis.
   "You're saying, " he said, weighing each word, "that we should send Carrot away to be a duck among humans because Bjorn Stronginthearm is my uncle. "
   "He's a fine lad. Plenty of openings for a big strong lad like him, " said Varneshi.
   "I have heard that dwarfs go off to work in the Big City, " said the king uncertainly. "And they send back money to their families, which is very commendable and proper. "
   "There you are then. Get him a job in… in…" Var­neshi sought for inspiration,"…in the Watch, or some­thing. My great-grandfather was in the Watch, you know. Fine job for a big lad, my grandad said. "
   "What is a Watch?" said the king.
   "Oh, " said Varneshi, with the vagueness of some­one whose family for the last three generations hadn't travelled more than twenty miles, "they goes about making sure people keep the laws and do what they're told. "
   "That is a very proper concern, " said the king who, since he was usually the one doing the telling, had very solid views about people doing what they were told.
   "Of course, they don't take just anyone, " said Var­neshi, dredging the depths of his recollection.
   "I should think not, for such an important task. I shall write to their king. "
   "I don't think they have a king there, " said Varne­shi. "Just some man who tells them what to do. "
   The king of the dwarfs took this calmly. This seemed to be about ninety-seven per cent of the definition of kingship, as far as he was concerned.
   Carrot took the news without fuss, just as he took instructions about re-opening Shaft #4 or cutting tim­ber for shoring props. All dwarfs are by nature dutiful, serious, literate, obedient and thoughtful people whose only minor failing is a tendency, after one drink, to rush at enemies screaming "Arrrrrrgh!" and axing their legs off at the knee. Carrot saw no reason to be any different. He would go to this city - whatever that was - and have a man made of him.
   They took only the finest, Varneshi had said. A watchman had to be a skilled fighter and clean in thought, word and deed. From the depths of his an­cestral anecdotage the old man had dragged tales of moonlight chases across rooftops, and tremendous battles with miscreants which, of course, his great-grandad had won despite being heavily outnumbered.
   Carrot had to admit it sounded better than mining.
   After some thought, the king wrote to the ruler of Ankh-Morpork, respectfully asking if Carrot could be considered for a place amongst the city's finest.
   Letters rarely got written in that mine. Work stopped and the whole clan had sat around in respectful silence as his pen scrittered across the parchment. His aunt had been sent up to Varneshi's to beg his pardon but could he see his way clear to sparing a smidgen of wax His sister had been sent down to the village to ask Mistress Garlick the witch how you stopped spelling recommendation.
   Months had gone by.
   And then there'd been the reply. It was fairly grubby, since mail in the Ramtops was generally handed to whoever was going in more or less the right direction, and it was also fairly short. It said, baldly, that his application was accepted, and would he present him­self for duty immediately.
   "Just like that?" he said. "I thought there'd be tests and things. To see if I was suitable. "
   "You're my son, " said the king. "I told them that, see. Stands to reason you'll be suitable. Probably of­ficer material. "
   He'd pulled a sack from under his chair, rummaged around in it and presented Carrot with a length of metal, more a sword than a saw but only just.
   "This might rightly belong to you, " he said. "When we found the... carts, this was the only thing left. The bandits, you see. Just between you and me," he beckoned Carrot closer,"we had a witch look at it. In case it was magic. But it isn't. Quite the most un-magical sword she'd ever seen, she said. They nor­mally have a bit, see, on account of it's like magnetism, I suppose. Got quite a nice balance, though. "
   He handed it over.
   He rummaged around some more. "And then there's this. " He held up a shirt. "It'll protect you. "
   Carrot fingered it carefully. It was made from the wool of Ramtop sheep, which had all the warmth and softness of hog bristles. It was one of the legendary woolly dwarf vests, the kind of vest that needs hinges.
   "Protect me from what?" he said.
   "Colds, and so on, " said the king. "Your mother says you've got to wear it. And… er... that reminds me. Mr Varneshi says he'd like you to drop in on the way down the mountain. He's got something for you. "
   His father and mother had waved him out of sight. Minty didn't. Funny, that. She seemed to have been avoiding him lately.
   He'd taken the sword, slung on his back, sandwiches and clean underwear in his pack, and the world, more or less, at his feet. In his pocket was the famous letter from the Patrician, the man who ruled the great fine city of Ankh-Morpork.
   At least, that's how his mother had referred to it. It certainly had an important-looking crest at the top, but the signature was something like "Lupin Squiggle, Sec'y, pp".
   Still, if it wasn't actually signed by the Patrician then it had certainly been written by someone who worked for him. Or in the same building. Probably the Patri­cian had at least known about the letter. In general terms. Not this letter, perhaps, but probably he knew about the existence of letters in general.
   Carrot walked steadfastly down the mountain paths, disturbing clouds of bumblebees. After a while he un­sheathed the sword and made experimental stabs at felonious tree stumps and unlawful assemblies of stinging nettles.
   Varneshi was sitting outside his hut, threading dried mushrooms on a string.
   "Hallo, Carrot, " he said, leading the way inside. "Looking forward to the city?"
   Carrot gave this due consideration.
   "No, " he said.
   "Having second thoughts, are you?"
   "No. I was just walking along, " said Carrot hon­estly. "I wasn't thinking about anything much. "
   "Your dad give you the sword, did he?" said Var­neshi, rummaging on a fetid shelf.
   "Yes. And a woolly vest to protect me against chills. "
   "Ah. Yes, it can be very damp down there, so I've heard. Protection. Very important. " He turned around and added, dramatically, "This belonged to my great-grandfather. "
   It was a strange, vaguely hemispherical device sur­rounded by straps.
   "It's some sort of sling?" said Carrot, after examining it in polite silence.
   Varneshi told him what it was.
   "Codpiece like in fish?" said Carrot, mystified.
   "No. It's for the fighting, " mumbled Varneshi. "You should wear it all the time. Protects your vitals, like. "
   Carrot tried it on.
   "It's a bit small, Mr Varneshi. "
   "That's because you don't wear it on your head, you see. "
   Varneshi explained some more, to Carrot's mount­ing bewilderment and, subsequently, horror. "My great-grandad used to say, " Varneshi finished, "that but for this I wouldn't be here today. "
   "What did he mean by that?"
   Varneshi's mouth opened and shut a few times. "I've no idea, " he said, spinelessly.
   Anyway, the shameful thing was now at the very bottom of Carrot's pack. Dwarfs didn't have much truck with things like that. The ghastly preventative represented a glimpse into a world as alien as the backside of the moon.
   There had been another gift from Mr Varneshi. It was a small but very thick book, bound in a leather that had become like wood over the years.
   It was called: The Laws And Ordinances of The Cities of Ankh And Morpork.
   "This belonged to my great-grandad as well, " he said. "This is what the Watch has to know. You have to know all the laws, " he said virtuously, "to be a good officer. ''
   Perhaps Varneshi should have recalled that, in the whole of Carrot's life, no one had ever really lied to him or given him an instruction that he wasn't meant to take quite literally. Carrot solemnly took the book. It would never have occurred to him, if he was going to be an officer of the Watch, to be less than a good one.
   It was a five hundred mile journey and, surprisingly, quite uneventful. People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad across the shoulders often have uneventful journeys. People jump out at them from behind rocks then say things like, "Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone else. "
   He'd spent most of the journey reading.
   And now Ankh-Morpork was before him.
   It was a little disappointing. He'd expected high white towers rearing over the landscape, and flags. Ankh-Morpork didn't rear. Rather, it sort of skulked, clinging to the soil as if afraid someone might steal it. There were no flags.
   There was a guard on the gate. At least, he was wearing chain mail and the thing he was propped up against was a spear. He had to be a guard.
   Carrot saluted him and presented the letter. The man looked at it for some time.
   "Mm?" he said, eventually.
   "I think I've got to see Lupin Squiggle Sec'y pp, " said Carrot.
   "What's the pp for?" said the guard suspiciously.
   "Could it be Pretty Promptly?" said Carrot, who had wondered about this himself.
   "Well, I don't know about any Sec'y, " said the guard. "You want Captain Vimes of the Night Watch. "
   ' 'And where is he based?'' said Carrot, politely.
   "At this time of day I'd try The Bunch of Grapes in Easy Street, " said the guard. He looked Carrot up and down. "Joining the watch, are you?"
   "I hope to prove worthy, yes, " said Carrot.
   The guard gave him what could loosely be called an old-fashioned look. It was practically neolithic.
   "What was it you done?" he said.
   "I'm sorry?" said Carrot.
   "You must of done something, " said the guard.
   "My father wrote a letter, " said Carrot proudly. "I've been volunteered. "
   "Bloody hellfire, " said the guard.
 
   Now it was night again, and beyond the dread portal:
   "Are the Wheels of Torment duly spun?" said the Supreme Grand Master.
   The Elucidated Brethren shuffled around their cir­cle.
   "Brother Watchtower?" said the Supreme Grand Master.
   "Not my job to spin the Wheels of Torment, " mut­tered Brother Watchtower. " 's Brother Plasterer's job, spinning the Wheels of Torment…"
   "No it bloody well isn't, it's my job to oil the Axles of the Universal Lemon, " said Brother Plasterer hotly. "You always say it's my job…"
   The Supreme Grand Master sighed in the depths of his cowl as yet another row began. From this dross he was going to forge an Age of Rationality?
   "Just shut up, will you?" he snapped. "We don't really need the Wheels of Torment tonight. Stop it, the pair of you. Now, Brethren - you have all brought the items as instructed?"
   There was a general murmuring.
   "Place them in the Circle of Conjuration, " said the Supreme Grand Master.
   It was a sorry collection. Bring magical things, he'd said. Only Brother Fingers had produced anything worthwhile. It looked like some sort of altar orna­ment, best not to ask from where. The Supreme Grand Master stepped forward and prodded one of the other things with his toe.
   "What, " he said, "is this?"
   " 'S 'n amulet, " muttered Brother Dunnykin, " 's very powerful. Bought it off a man. Guaranteed. Pro­tects you against crocodile bites. "
   "Are you sure you can spare it?" said the Supreme Grand Master. There was a dutiful titter from the rest of the Brethren.
   "Less of that, brothers, " said the Grand Master, spinning around. "Bring magical things, I said. Not cheap jewellery and rubbish! Good grief, this city is lousy with magic!" He reached down. "What are these things, for heaven's sake?"
   "They're stones, " said Brother Plasterer uncer­tainly.
   "I can see that. Why 're they magical?"
   Brother Plasterer began to tremble. "They've got holes in them, Supreme Grand Master. Everyone knows that stones with holes in them are magical. "
   The Supreme Grand Master walked back to his place on the circle. He threw his arms up.
   "Right, fine, okay, " he said wearily. "If that's how we're going to do it, that's how we're going to do it. If we get a dragon six inches long we'll all know the reason why. Won't we, Brother Plasterer. Brother Plasterer? Sorry. I didn't hear what you said? Brother Plasterer?"
   "I said yes, Supreme Grand Master, " whispered Brother Plasterer.
   "Very well. So long as that's quite understood. " The Supreme Grand Master turned and picked up the book.
   "And now, " he said, "if we are all quite ready... "
   "Um. " Brother Watchtower meekly raised his hand.
   "Ready for what, Supreme Grand Master?" he said.
   "For the summoning, of course. Good grief, I should have thought-"
   "But you haven't told us what we're supposed to do, Supreme Grand Master, " whined Brother Watch-tower.
   The Grand Master hesitated. This was quite true, but he wasn't going to admit it.
   "Well, of course, " he said. "It's obvious. You have to focus your concentration. Think hard about drag­ons, " he translated. "All of you. "
   "That's all, is it?" said Brother Doorkeeper.
   "Yes. "
   "Don't we have to chant a mystic prune or some­thing?"
   The Supreme Grand Master stared at him. Brother Doorkeeper managed to look as defiant in the face of oppression as an anonymous shadow in a black cowl could look. He hadn't joined a secret society not to chant mystic runes. He'd been looking forward to it.
   "You can if you like, " said the Supreme Grand Master. "Now, I want you - yes, what is it, Brother Dunnykin?"
   The little Brother lowered his hand. "Don't know any mystic prunes, Grand Master. Not to what you might call chant... "
   "Hm!"
   He opened the book.
   He'd been rather surprised to find, after pages and pages of pious ramblings, that the actual Summoning itself was one short sentence. Not a chant, not a brief piece of poetry, but a mere assemblage of meaningless syllables. De Malachite said they caused interference patterns in the waves of reality, but the daft old fool was probably making it up as he went along. That was the trouble with wizards, they had to make everything look difficult. All you really needed was willpower. And the Brethren had a lot of that. Small-minded and vitriolic willpower, yes, lousy with malignity maybe, but still powerful enough in its way...
   They'd try nothing fancy this time round. Some­where inconspicuous...
   Around him the Brethren were chanting what each man considered, according to his lights, to be something mystical. The general effect was actually quite good, if you didn't listen to the words.
   The words. Oh, yes...
   He looked down, and spoke them aloud.
   Nothing happened.
   He blinked.
   When he opened his eyes again he was in a dark alley, his stomach was full of fire, and he was very angry.
 
   It was about to be the worst night of his life for Zebbo Mooty, Thief Third Class, and it wouldn't have made him any happier to know that it was also going to be the last one. The rain was keeping people indoors, and he was way behind on his quota. He was, therefore, a little less cautious than he might otherwise have been.
   In the night time streets of Ankh-Morpork caution is an absolute. There is no such thing as moderately cautious. You are either very cautious, or you are dead. You might be walking around and breathing, but you're dead, just the same.
   He heard the muffled sounds coming from the nearby alley, slid his leather-bound cosh from his sleeve, waited until the victim was almost turning the corner, sprang out, said "Oh, shi…," and died.
   It was a most unusual death. No-one else had died like that for hundreds of years.
   The stone wall behind him glowed cherry red with heat, which gradually faded into darkness.
   He was the first to see the Ankh-Morpork dragon. He derived little comfort from knowing this, however, because he was dead.
   "…t, " he said, and his disembodied self looked down at the small heap of charcoal which, he knew with an unfamiliar sort of certainty, was what he had just been disembodied from. It was a strange sensa­tion, seeing your own mortal remains. He didn't find it as horrifying as he would have imagined if you'd asked him, say, ten minutes ago. Finding that you are dead is mitigated by also finding that there really is a you who can find you dead.
   The alley opposite was empty again.
   "That was really strange, " said Mooty.
   "Extremely unusual, certainly."
   "Did you see that? What was it?" Mooty looked up at the dark figure emerging from the shadows. "Who're you, anyway?" he added suspiciously.
   "Guess, " said the voice.
   Mooty peered at the hooded figure.
   "Cor!" he said. "I thought you dint turn up for the likes o' me. "
   I TURN UP FOR EVERYONE.
   "I mean in... person, sort of thing. "
   "Sometimes. On special occasions."
   "Yeah, well, " said Mooty, "this is one of them, all right! I mean, it looked like a bloody dragon! What's a man to do? You don't expect to find a dragon around the corner!"
   "And now, if you would care to step this way ..". said Death, laying a skeletal hand on Mooty's shoulder.
   "Do you know, a fortune teller once told me I'd die in my bed, surrounded by grieving great­grandchildren, " said Mooty, following the stately figure. "What do you think of that, eh?"
   I THINK SHE WAS WRONG.
   "A bloody dragon, " said Mooty. "Fire breathing, too. Did I suffer much?"
   NO. IT WAS PRACTICALLY INSTANTANEOUS.
   "That's good. I wouldn't like to think I'd suffered much. " Mooty looked around him. "What happens now?" he said.
   Behind them, the rain washed the little heap of black ash into the mud.
   ...
   The Supreme Grand Master opened his eyes. He was lying on his back. Brother Dunnykin was preparing to give him the kiss of life. The mere thought was enough to jerk anyone from the borders of consciousness.
   He sat up, trying to shed the feeling that he weighed several tons and was covered in scales.
   "We did it, " he whispered. "The dragon! It came! I felt it!"
   The Brethren glanced at one another.
   "We never saw nothing, " said Brother Plasterer.
   "I might of seen something, " said Brother Watchtower loyally.
   "No, not here, " snapped the Supreme Grand Mas­ter. "You hardly want it to materialise here, do you? It was out there, in the city. Just for a few seconds... "
   He pointed. "Look!"
   The Brethren turned around guiltily, expecting at any moment the hot flame of retribution.
   In the centre of the circle the magic items were gently crumbling to dust. Even as they watched, Brother Dunnykin's amulet collapsed.
   "Sucked dry, " whispered Brother Fingers. "I'll be damned!"
   "Three dollars that amulet cost me, " muttered Brother Dunnykin.
   "But it proves it works, " said the Supreme Grand Master. "Don't you see, you fools? It works! We can summon dragons!"
   "Could be a bit expensive in magical items, " said Brother Fingers doubtfully.
   "…three dollars, it was. No rubbish…"
   "Power, " growled the Supreme Grand Master, "does not come cheap. "
   "Very true, " nodded Brother Watchtower. "Not cheap. Very true. " He looked at the little heap of ex­hausted magic again. "Cor, " he said. "We did it though, dint we! We only went and bloody well did some magic, right?"
   "See?" said Brother Fingers. "I tole you there was nothin' to it. "
   "You all did exceptionally well, " said the Supreme Grand Master encouragingly.
   "…should've been six dollars, but he said he'd cut his own throat and sell it me for three dollars…"
   "Yeah, " said Brother Watchtower. "We got the hang of it all right! Dint hurt a bit. We done real magic! And dint get et by tooth fairies from out of the woodwork either, Brother Plasterer, I couldn't help noticing. "
   The other Brethren nodded. Real magic. Nothing to it. Everyone had just better watch out.
   "Hang on, though, " said Brother Plasterer. "Where's this dragon gone? I mean, did we really summon it or not?"
   "Fancy you asking a silly question like that, " said Brother Watchtower doubtfully.
   The Supreme Grand Master brushed the dust off his mystic robe.
   "We summoned it, " he said, "and it came. But only as long as the magic lasted. Then it went back. If we want it to stay longer, we need more magic. Understand? And that is what we must get. "
   "…three dollars I shan't see again in a hurry…"
   "Shut up!"
   ...
   Dearest Father [wrote Carrot] Well, here I am in Ankh-Morpork. It is not like at home. I think it must have changed a bit since Mr Varneshi's great-grandfather was here. I don't think people here know Right from Wrong.
   I found Captain Vimes in a common ale-house. I remembered what you said about a good dwarf not going into such places, but since he did not come out, I went in. He was lying with his head on the table. When I spoke to him, he said, pull the other one, kid, it has got bells on. I believe he was the worse for drink. He told me to find a place to stay and report to Sgt Colon at the Watch House tonight. He said, any­one wanting to join the guard needed their head ex­amined.
   Mr Varneshi did not mention this. Perhaps it is done for reasons of Hygiene.
   I went for a walk. There are many people here. I found a place, it is called The Shades. Then I saw some men trying to rob a young Lady. I set about them. They did not know how to fight properly and one of them tried to kick me in the Vitals, but I was wearing the Protective as instructed and he hurt him­self. Then the Lady came up to me and said, ' 'Was I Interested in Bed.' I said yes. She took me to where she lived, a boarding house, I think it is called. It is run by a Mrs Palm. The Lady whose purse it was, she is called Reel, said, You should of seen him, there were 3 of them, it was amazing. Mrs Palm said, It is on the house. She said, what a big Protective. So I went upstairs and fell asleep, although it is a very noisy place. Reel woke me up once or twice to say, Do you want anything, but they had no apples. So I have fallen on my Feet, as they say here but, I don't see how that is possible because, if you fall you fall off your Feet, it is Common Sense.
   There is certainly a lot to do. When I went to see the Sgt I saw a place called, The Thieves' Guild!! I asked Mrs Palm and she said, Of course. She said the leaders of the Thieves in the City meet there. I went to the Watch House and met Sgt Colon, a very fat man, and when I told him about the Thieves' Guild he said, 'Don't be An Idiot.' I do not think he is serious. He says, 'Don't you worry about Thieves' Guilds, This is all what you have to do, you walk along the Streets at Night, shouting, It's Twelve O'clock and All's Well.
   I said, 'What if it is not all well,' and he said, 'You bloody well find another street.'
   This is not Leadership.
   I have been given some chain mail. It is rusty and not well made.
   They give you money for being a guard. It is, 20 dollars a month. When I get it I will send you it.
   I hope you are all well and that Shaft #5 is now open. This afternoon I will go and look at the Thieves' Guild. It is disgraceful. If I do something about it, it will be a Feather in my Cap. I am getting the Hang of how they talk here already. Your loving son, Carrot.
   PS. Please give all my love to Minty. I really miss her.
   ...
   Lord Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, put his hand over his eyes.
   "He did what?"
   "I was marched through the streets, " said Urdo van Pew, currently President of the Guild of Thieves, Bur­glars and Allied Trades. "In broad daylight! With my hands tied together!" He took a few steps towards the Patrician's severe chair of office, waving a finger.
   "You know very well that we have kept within the Budget, " he said. "To be humiliated like that! Like a common criminal! There had better be a full apol­ogy, " he said, "or you will have another strike on your hands. We will be driven to it, despite our natural civic responsibilities, " he added.
   It was the finger. The finger was a mistake. The Patrician was staring coldly at the finger. Van Pew followed his gaze, and quickly lowered the digit. The Patrician was not a man you shook a finger at unless you wanted to end up being able to count only to nine.
   "And you say this was one person?" said Lord Vet­inari.
   "Yes! That is…" Van Pew hesitated.
   It did sound weird, now he came to tell someone.
   "But there are hundreds of you in there, " said the Patrician calmly. "Thick as, you should excuse the expression, thieves. "
   Van Pew opened and shut his mouth a few times. The honest answer would have been: yes, and if any­one had come sidling in and skulking around the cor­ridors it would have been the worse for them. It was the way he strode in as if he owned the place that fooled everyone. That and the fact that he kept hitting people and telling them to Mend their Ways.
   The Patrician nodded.
   "I shall deal with the matter momentarily, " he said. It was a good word. It always made people hesitate. They were never quite sure whether he meant he'd deal with it now, or just deal with it briefly. And no one ever dared ask.
   Van Pew backed down.
   "A full apology, mark you. I have a position to maintain, " he added.
   "Thank you. Do not let me detain you, " said the Patrician, once again giving the language his own in­dividual spin.
   "Right. Good. Thank you. Very well, " said the thief.
   ' 'After all, you have such a lot of work to do, '' Lord Vetinari went on.
   "Well, of course this is the case. " The thief hesi­tated. The Patrician's last remark had barbs on it. You found yourself waiting for him to strike.
   "Er, " he said, hoping for a clue.
   "With so much business being conducted, that is."
   Panic took over the thief's features. Randomised guilt flooded his mind. It wasn't a case of what had he done, it was a question of what the Patrician had found out about. The man had eyes everywhere, none of them so terrifying as the icy blue ones just above his nose.
   "I, er, don't quite follow... "he began.
   "Curious choice of targets. " The Patrician picked up a sheet of paper. " For example, a crystal ball be­longing to a fortune teller in Sheer Street. A small ornament from the temple of Offler the Crocodile God. And so on. Gewgaws. "
   "I am afraid I really don't know-" said the head thief. The Patrician leaned forward.
   "No unlicensed thieving, surely?" he said.[6]
   "I shall look into it directly!" stuttered the head thief. "Depend upon it!"
   The Patrician gave him a sweet smile. "I'm sure I can, " he said. "Thank you for coming to see me. Don't hesitate to leave. "
   The thief shuffled out. It was always like this with the Patrician, he reflected bitterly. You came to him with a perfectly reasonable complaint. Next thing you knew, you were shuffling out backwards, bowing and scraping, relieved simply to be getting away. You had to hand it to the Patrician, he admitted grudgingly. If you didn't, he sent men to come and take it away.
   When he'd gone Lord Vetinari rang the little bronze bell that summoned his secretary. The man's name, despite his handwriting, was Lupine Wonse. He ap­peared, pen poised.
   You could say this about Lupine Wonse. He was neat. He always gave the impression of just being com­pleted. Even his hair was so smoothed-down and oiled it looked as though it had been painted on.
   "The Watch appears to be having some difficulty with the Thieves' Guild, " said the Patrician. "Van Pew has been in here claiming that a member of the Watch arrested him. "
   "What for, sir?"
   "Being a thief, apparently. "
   "A member of the Watch? " said the secretary.
   "I know. But just sort it out, will you?"
   The Patrician smiled to himself.
   It was always hard to fathom Lord Vetinari's idio­syncratic sense of humour, but a vision of the red-faced, irate head thief kept coming back to him.
   One of the Patrician's greatest contributions to the reliable operation of Ankh-Morpork had been, very early in his administration, the legalising of the an­cient Guild of Thieves. Crime was always with us, he reasoned, and therefore, if you were going to have crime, it at least should be organised crime.
   And so the Guild had been encouraged to come out of the shadows and build a big Guildhouse, take their place at civic banquets, and set up their training col­lege with day-release courses and City and Guilds cer­tificates and everything. In exchange for the winding down of the Watch, they agreed, while trying to keep their faces straight, to keep crime levels to a level to be determined annually. That way, everyone could plan ahead, said Lord Vetinari, and part of the uncertainty had been removed from the chaos that is life.
   And then, a little while later, the Patrician sum­moned the leading thieves again and said, oh, by the way, there was something else. What was it, now? Oh, yes...
   I know who you are, he said. I know where you live. I know what kind of horse you ride. I know where your wife has her hair done. I know where your lovely children, how old are they now, my, doesn't time fly, I know where they play. So you won't forget about what we agreed, will you? And he smiled.
   So did they, after a fashion.
   And in fact it had turned out very satisfactorily from everyone's point of view. It took the head thieves a very little time to grow paunches and start having coats-of-arms made and meet in a proper building rather than smoky dens, which no one had liked much. A complicated arrangement of receipts and vouchers saw to it that, while everyone was eligible for the at­tentions of the Guild, no one had too much, and this was very acceptable - at least to those citizens who were rich enough to afford the quite reasonable pre­miums the Guild charged for an uninterrupted life. There was a strange foreign word for this: inn-sewer-ants. No-one knew exactly what it had originally meant, but Ankh-Morpork had made it its own.
   The Watch hadn't liked it, but the plain fact was that the thieves were far better at controlling crime than the Watch had ever been. After all, the Watch had to work twice as hard to cut crime just a little, whereas all the Guild had to do was to work less.
   And so the city prospered, while the Watch had dwindled away, like a useless appendix, into a handful of unemployables who no one in their right mind could ever take seriously.
   The last thing anyone wanted them to do was get it into their heads to fight crime. But seeing the head thief discommoded was always worth the trouble, the Patrician felt.
   ...
   Captain Vimes knocked very hesitantly at the door, because each tap echoed around his skull.
   "Enter. "
   Vimes removed his helmet, tucked it under his arm and pushed the door open. Its creak was a blunt saw across the front of his brain.
   He always felt uneasy in the presence of Lupine Wonse. Come to that, he felt uneasy in the presence of Lord Vetinari - but that was different, that was down to breeding. And ordinary fear, of course. Whereas he'd known Wonse since their childhood in the Shades. The boy had shown promise even then. He was never a gang leader. Never a gang leader. Hadn't got the strength or stamina for that. And, after all, what was the point in being the gang leader? Behind every gang leader were a couple of lieutenants bucking for pro­motion. Being a gang leader is not a job with long-term prospects. But in every gang there is a pale youth who's allowed to stay because he's the one who comes up with all the clever ideas, usually to do with old women and unlocked shops; this was Wonse's natural place in the order of things.
   Vimes had been one of the middle rankers, the fal­setto equivalent of a yes-man. He remembered Wonse as a skinny little kid, always tagging along behind in hand-me-down pants with the kind of odd skipping run he'd invented to keep up with the bigger boys, and forever coming up with fresh ideas to stop them idly ganging up on him, which was the usual recreation if nothing more interesting presented itself. It was su­perb training for the rigors of adulthood, and Wonse became good at it.
   Yes, they'd both started in the gutter. But Wonse had worked his way up whereas, as he himself would be the first to admit, Vimes had merely worked his way along. Every time he seemed to be getting anywhere he spoke his mind, or said the wrong thing. Usually both at once.
   That was what made him uncomfortable around Wonse. It was the ticking of the bright clockwork of ambition.
   Vimes had never mastered ambition. It was some­thing that happened to other people.
   "Ah, Vimes. "
   "Sir, " said Vimes woodenly. He didn't try to salute in case he fell over. He wished he'd had time to drink dinner.
   Wonse rummaged in the papers of his desk.
   "Strange things afoot, Vimes. Serious complaint about you, I'm afraid, " he said. Wonse didn't wear glasses. If he had worn glasses, he'd have peered at Vimes over the top of them.
   "Sir?"
   "One of your Night Watch men. Seems he arrested the head of the Thieves' Guild. "
   Vimes swayed a little and tried hard to focus. He wasn't ready for this sort of thing.
   "Sorry, sir, " he said. "Seem to have lost you there. "
   "I said, Vimes, that one of your men arrested the head of the Thieves' Guild. "
   "One of my men?"
   "Yes. "
   Vimes's scattered brain cells tried valiantly to re­group. "A member of the Watch?" he said.
   Wonse grinned mirthlessly. "Tied him up and left him in front of the palace. There's a bit of a stink about it, I'm afraid. There was a note.... ah... here it is... 'This man is charged with, Conspiracy to commit Crime, under Section 14 (iii) of the General Felonies Act, 1678, by me, Carrot Ironfoundersson. ' "
   Vimes squinted at him.
   "Fourteen eye-eye-eye?"
   "Apparently, " said Wonse.
   "What does that mean?"
   "I really haven't the faintest notion, " said Wonse drily. "And what about the name... Carrot?"
   "But we don't do things like that!" said Vimes. "You can't go around arresting the Thieves' Guild. I mean, we'd be at it all day!"
   "Apparently this Carrot thinks otherwise. "
   The captain shook his head, and winced. "Carrot? Doesn't ring a bell. " The tone of blurred conviction was enough even for Wonse, who was momentarily taken aback.
   "He was quite…" The secretary hesitated. "Car­rot, Carrot, " he said. "I've heard the name before.
   Seen it written down. " His face went blank. "The volunteer, that was it! Remember me showing you?''
   Vimes stared at him. "Wasn't there a letter from, I don't know, some dwarf…?''
   "All about serving the community and keeping the streets safe, that's right. Begging that his son would be found suitable for a humble position in the Watch. '' The secretary was rummaging among his files.
   "What'd he done?" said Vimes.
   "Nothing. That was it. Not a blessed thing. "
   Vimes's brow creased as his thoughts shaped them­selves around a new concept.
   "A volunteer?" he said.
   "Yes. "
   "He didn't have to join?"
   "He wanted to join. And you said it must be a joke, and I said we ought to try and get more ethnic minor­ities into the Watch. You remember?''
   Vimes tried to. It wasn't easy. He was vaguely aware that he drank to forget. What made it rather pointless was that he couldn't remember what it was he was forgetting any more. In the end he just drank to forget about drinking.
   A trawl of the chaotic assortment of recollections that he didn't even try to dignify any more by the name of memory produced no clue.
   "Do I?" he said helplessly.
   Wonse folded his hands on the desk and leaned for­ward.
   "Now look, Captain, " he said. "Lordship wants an explanation. I don't want to have to tell him the cap­tain of the Night Watch hasn't the faintest idea what goes on among the men under, if I may use the term loosely, his command. That sort of thing only leads to trouble, questions asked, that sort of thing. We don't want that, do we. Do we?"
   "No, sir, " Vimes muttered. A vague recollection of someone earnestly talking to him in the Bunch of Grapes was bobbing guiltily at the back of his mind. Surely that hadn't been a dwarf? Not unless the qual­ification had been radically altered, at any rate.
   "Of course we don't, " said Wonse. "For old times' sake. And so on. So I'll think of something to tell him and you, Captain, will make a point of finding out what's going on and putting a stop to it. Give this dwarf a short lesson in what it means to be a guard, all right?"
   "Haha, " said Vimes dutifully.
   "I'm sorry?" said Wonse.
   "Oh. Thought you made an ethnic joke, there. Sir. "
   "Look, Vimes, I'm being very understanding. In the circumstances. Now, I want you to get out there and sort this out. Do you understand?"
   Vimes saluted. The black depression that always lurked ready to take advantage of his sobriety moved in on his tongue.
   "Right you are, Mr Secretary, " he said. "I'll see to it that he learns that arresting thieves is against the law. "
   He wished he hadn't said that. If he didn't say things like that he'd have been better off now. Captain of the Palace Guard, a big man. Giving him the Watch had been the Patrician's little joke. But Wonse was already reading a new document on his desk. If he noticed the sarcasm, he didn't show it.
   "Very good, " he said.
   ...
   Dearest Mother [Carrot wrote] It has been a much better day. I went into the Thieves' Guild and arrested the chief Miscreant and dragged him to the Patrician's Palace. No more trouble from him, I fancy. And Mrs Palm says I can stay in the attic because, it is always useful to have a man around the place. This was be­cause, in the night, there were men the Worse for Drink making a Fuss in one of the Girl's Rooms, and I had to speak to them and they Showed Fight and one of them tried to hurt me with his knee but I had the Protective and Mrs Palm says he has broken his Patella but I needn't pay for a new one.
   I do not understand some of the Watch duties. I have a partner, his name is Nobby. He says I am too keen. He says I have got a lot to learn. I think this is true, because, I have only got up to Page 326 in, The Laws and Ordinances of the Cities of Ankh and Morpork. Love to all, Your Son, Carrot.
   PS. Love to Minty.
   ...
   It wasn't just the loneliness, it was the back-to-front way of living. That was it, thought Vimes.
   The Night Watch got up when the rest of the world was going to bed, and went to bed when dawn drifted over the landscape. You spent your whole time in the damp, dark streets, in a world of shadows. The Night Watch attracted the kind of people who for one reason or another were inclined to that kind of life.
   He reached the Watch House. It was an ancient and surprisingly large building, wedged between a tannery and a tailor who made suspicious leather goods. It must have been quite imposing once, but quite a lot of it was now uninhabitable and patrolled only by owls and rats. Over the door a motto in the ancient tongue of the city was now almost eroded by time and grime and lichen, but could just be made out:
   FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC
   It translated-according to Sergeant Colon, who had served in foreign parts and considered himself an ex­pert on languages-as 'To Protect and to Serve'.
   Yes. Being a guard must have meant something, once.
   Sergeant Colon, he thought, as he stumbled into the musty gloom. Now there was a man who liked the dark. Sergeant Colon owed thirty years of happy marriage to the fact that Mrs Colon worked all day and Sergeant Colon worked all night. They communicated by means of notes. He got her tea ready before he left at night, she left his breakfast nice and hot in the oven in the mornings. They had three grown-up children, all born, Vimes had assumed, as a result of extremely persuasive handwriting.
   And Corporal Nobbs... well, anyone like Nobby had unlimited reasons for not wishing to be seen by other people. You didn't have to think hard about that. The only reason you couldn't say that Nobby was close to the animal kingdom was that the animal kingdom would get up and walk away.
   And then, of course, there was himself. Just a skinny, unshaven collection of bad habits marinated in alcohol. And that was the Night Watch. Just the three of them. Once there had been dozens, hundreds. And now-just three.
   Vimes fumbled his way up the stairs, groped his way into his office, slumped into the primeval leather chair with its prolapsed stuffing, scrabbled at the bot­tom drawer, grabbed bottle, bit cork, tugged, spat out cork, drank. Began his day.
   The world swam into focus.
   Life is just chemicals. A drop here, a drip there, everything's changed. A mere dribble of fermented juices and suddenly you're going to live another few hours.
   Once, in the days when this had been a respectable district, some hopeful owner of the tavern next door had paid a wizard a considerable sum of money for an illuminated sign, every letter a different colour. Now it worked erratically and sometimes short-circuited in the damp. At the moment the E was a garish pink and flashed on and off at random.
   Vimes had grown accustomed to it. It seemed like part of life.
   He stared at the flickering play of light on the crumbling plaster for a while, and then raised one sandalled foot and thumped heavily on the floorboards, twice.
   After a few minutes a distant wheezing indicated that Sergeant Colon was climbing the stairs.
   Vimes counted silently. Colon always paused for six seconds at the top of the flight to get some of his breath back.
   On the seventh second the door opened. The ser­geant's face appeared around it like a harvest moon.
   You could describe Sergeant Colon like this: he was the sort of man who, if he took up a military career, would automatically gravitate to the post of sergeant. You couldn't imagine him ever being a corporal. Or, for that matter, a captain. If he didn't take up a military career, then he looked cut out for something like, perhaps, a sau­sage butcher; some job where a big red face and a ten­dency to sweat even in frosty weather were practically part of the specification.
   He saluted and, with considerable care, placed a scruffy piece of paper on Vimes's desk and smoothed it out.
   "Evenin', Captain, " he said. "Yesterday's incident reports, and that. Also, you owe fourpence to the Tea Club. "
   "What's this about a dwarf, Sergeant?" said Vimes abruptly.
   Colon's brow wrinkled. "What dwarf?"
   "The one who's just joined the Watch. Name of,…" Vimes hesitated,"…Carrot, or something. "
   "Him?" Colon's mouth dropped open. "He's a dwarf? I always said you couldn't trust them little bug­gers! He fooled me all right, Captain, the little sod must of lied about his height!" Colon was a sizeist, at least when it came to people smaller than himself.
   "Do you know he arrested the President of the Thieves' Guild this morning?"
   "What for?"
   "For being president of the Thieves' Guild, it seems. "
   The sergeant looked puzzled. "Where's the crime in that?"
   "I think perhaps I had better have a word with this Carrot, " said Vimes.
   "Didn't you see him, sir?" said Colon. "He said he'd reported to you, sir. "
   "I, uh, must have been busy at the time. Lot on my mind, " said Vimes.
   "Yes, sir, " said Colon, politely. Vimes had just enough self-respect left to look away and shuffle the strata of paperwork on his desk.
   "We've got to get him off the streets as soon as possible, " he muttered. "Next thing you know he'll be bringing in the chief of the Assassins' Guild for bloody well killing people! Where is he?"
   "I sent him out with Corporal Nobbs, Captain. I said he'd show him the ropes, sort of thing. "
   "You sent a raw recruit out with Nobby?" said Vimes wearily.
   Colon stuttered. "Well, sir, experienced man, I thought, Corporal Nobbs could teach him a lot…"
   "Let's just hope he's a slow learner, " said Vimes, ramming his brown iron helmet on his head. "Come on. "
   When they stepped out of the Watch House there was a ladder against the tavern wall. A bulky man at the top of it swore under his breath as he wrestled with the illuminated sign.
   "It's the E that doesn't work properly, " Vimes called up.
   "What?"
   "The E. And the T sizzles when it rains. It's about time it was fixed. "
   "Fixed? Oh. Yes. Fixed. That's what I'm doing all right. Fixing. "
   The Watch men splashed off through the puddles.
   Brother Watchtower shook his head slowly, and turned his attention once again to his screwdriver.
   ...

Men like Corporal Nobbs can be found in every armed force. Although their grasp of the minutiae of the Reg­ulations is usually encyclopedic, they take good care never to be promoted beyond, perhaps, corporal. He tended to speak out of the corner of his mouth. He smoked incessantly but the weird thing, Carrot no­ticed, was that any cigarette smoked by Nobby became a dog-end almost instantly but remained a dog-end in­definitely or until lodged behind his ear, which was a sort of nicotine Elephant's Graveyard. On the rare oc­casions he took one out of his mouth he held it cupped in his hand.
   He was a small, bandy-legged man, with a certain resemblance to a chimpanzee who never got invited to tea parties.
   His age was indeterminate. But in cynicism and general world weariness, which is a sort of carbon dating of the personality, he was about seven thousand years old.
   "A cushy number, this route, " he said, as they strolled along a damp street in the merchants' quarter. He tried a door handle. It was locked. "You stick with me, " he added, "and I'll see you're all right. Now, you try the handles on the other side of the street. "
   "Ah. I understand, Corporal Nobbs. We've got to see if anyone's left their store unlocked, " said Carrot.
   "You catch on fast, son. "
   "I hope I can apprehend a miscreant in the act, " said Carrot zealously.
   "Er, yeah, " said Nobby, uncertainly.
   "But if we find a door unlocked I suppose we must summon the owner, " Carrot went on. "And one of us would have to stay to guard things, right?"
   "Yeah?" Nobby brightened. "I'll do that, " he said. "Don't you worry about it. Then you could go and find the victim. Owner, I mean. "
   He tried another doorknob. It turned under his grip.
   "Back in the mountains, " said Carrot, "if a thief was caught, he was hung up by the-"
   He paused, idly rattling a doorknob.
   Nobby froze.
   "By the what?" he said, in horrified fascination.
   "Can't remember now, " said Carrot. "My mother said it was too good for them, anyway. Stealing is Wrong. "
   Nobby had survived any number of famous massa­cres by not being there. He let go of the doorknob, and gave it a friendly pat.
   "Got it!" said Carrot. Nobby jumped.
   "Got what?" he shouted.
   "I remember what we hang them up by, " said Car­rot.
   "Oh, " said Nobby weakly. "Where?"
   "We hang them up by the town hall, " said Carrot. "Sometimes for days. They don't do it again, I can tell you. And Bjorn Stronginthearm's your uncle. "
   Nobby leaned his pike against the wall and fumbled a fag-end from the recesses of his ear. One or two things, he decided, needed to be sorted out.
   "Why did you have to become a guard, lad?" he said.
   "Everyone keeps on asking me that, " said Carrot. "I didn't have to. I wanted to. It will make a Man of me. "
   Nobby never looked anyone directly in the eye. He stared at Carrot's right ear in amazement.
   "You mean you ain't running away from anything?" he said.
   "What would I want to run away from anything for?"
   Nobby floundered a bit. "Ah. There's always some­thing. Maybe - maybe you was wrongly accused of something. Like, maybe, " he grinned, "maybe the stores was mysteriously short on certain items and you was unjustly blamed. Or certain items was found in your kit and you never knew how they got there. That sort of thing. You can tell old Nobby. Or, '' he nudged Carrot, "p'raps it was something else, eh? Shershay la fern, eh? Got a girl into trouble?"
   "I…" Carrot began, and then remembered that, yes, one should tell the truth, even to odd people like Nobby who didn't seem to know what it was. And the truth was that he was always getting Minty in trouble, although exactly how and why was a bit of a mystery. Just about every time he left after paying calls on her at the Rocksmacker cave, he could hear her father and mother shouting at her. They were always very polite to him, but somehow merely being seen with him was enough to get Minty into trouble.
   "Yes, " he said.
   "Ah. Often the case, " said Nobby wisely.
   "All the time, " said Carrot. "Just about every night, really. "
   "Blimey, " said Nobby, impressed. He looked down at the Protective. "Is that why they make you wear that, then?"
   "What do you mean?"
   "Well, don't worry about it, " said Nobby. "Every­one's got their little secret. Or big secret, as it might be. Even the captain. He's only with us because he was Brung Low by a Woman. That's what the sergeant says. Brung low. "
   "Goodness, " said Carrot. It sounded painful.
   "But I reckon it's 'cos he speaks his mind. Spoke it once too often to the Patrician, I heard. Said the Thieves' Guild was nothing but a pack of thieves, or something. That's why he's with us. Dunno, really. " He looked speculatively at the pavement and then said: "So where're you staying, lad?"
   "There's a lady called Mrs Palm-" Carrot began.
   Nobby choked on some smoke that went the wrong way.
   "In the Shades?" he wheezed. "You're staying there?"
   "Oh, yes. "
   "Every night?"
   "Well, every day, really. Yes. "
   "And you've come here to have a man made of you?"
   "Yes!"
   "I don't think I should like to live where you come from, " said Nobby.
   "Look, " said Carrot, thoroughly lost, "I came be­cause Mr Varneshi said it was the finest job in the world, upholding the law and everything. That's right, isn't it?"
   "Well, er, " said Nobby. "As to that... I mean, upholding the Law... I mean, once, yes, before we had all the Guilds and stuff... the law, sort of thing, ain't really, I mean, these days, everything's more... oh, I dunno. Basically you just ring your bell and keep your head down. ''
   Nobby sighed. Then he grunted, snatched his hour­glass from his belt, and peered in at the rapidly-draining sand grains. He put it back, pulled the leather muffler off his bell's clapper, and shook it once or twice, not very loudly.
   "Twelve of the clock, " he muttered, "and all's well. "
   "And that's it, is it?" said Carrot, as the tiny ech­oes died away.
   "More or less. More or less. " Nobby took a quick drag on his dog-end.
   "Just that? No moonlight chases across rooftops? No swinging on chandeliers? Nothing like that?" said Carrot.
   "Shouldn't think so, " said Nobby fervently. "I never done anything like that. No-one ever said anything to me about that. " He snatched a puff on the cigarette. "A man could catch his death of cold, chas­ing around on rooftops. I reckon I'll stick to the bell, if it's all the same to you. "
   "Can I have a go?" said Carrot.
   Nobby was feeling unbalanced. It can be the only reason why he made the mistake of wordlessly handing Carrot the bell.
   Carrot examined it for a few seconds. Then he waved it vigorously over his head.
   "Twelve o'clock!" he bellowed. "And all's weeeeelllll!"
   The echoes bounced back and forth across the street and finally were overwhelmed by a horrible, thick si­lence. Several dogs barked somewhere in the night. A baby started crying.
   "Ssshh!" hissed Nobby.
   "Well, it is all well, isn't it?" said Carrot.
   "It won't be if you keep on ringing that bloody bell! Give it here. "
   "I don't understand!" said Carrot. "Look, I've got this book Mr Varneshi gave me…" He fumbled for the Laws and Ordinances.
   Nobby glanced at them, and shrugged. "Never heard of 'em, " he said. "Now just shut up your row. You don't want to go making a din like that. You could attract all sorts. Come on, this way. "
   He grabbed Carrot's arm and bustled him along the street.
   "What sorts?" protested Carrot as he was pushed determinedly forward.
   "Bad sorts, " muttered Nobby.
   "But we're the Watch!"
   "Damn right! And we don't want to go tangling with people like that! Remember what happened to Gaskin!"
   "I don't remember what happened to Gaskin!" said Carrot, totally bewildered. "Who's Gaskin?"
   "Before your time, " mumbled Nobby. He deflated a bit. ' 'Poor bugger. Could of happened to any of us. " He looked up and glared at Carrot. "Now stop all this, you hear? It's getting on my nerves. Moonlight bloody chases, my bum!"
   He stalked along the street. Nobby's normal method of locomotion was a kind of sidle, and the combina­tion of stalking and sidling at the same time created a strange effect, like a crab limping.
   "But, but, " said Carrot, "in this book it says…"
   "I don't want to know from no book, " growled Nobby.
   Carrot looked utterly crestfallen.
   "But it's the Law…" he began.
   He was nearly terminally interrupted by an axe that whirred out of a low doorway beside him and bounced off the opposite wall. It was followed by sounds of splintering timber and breaking glass.
   "Hey, Nobby!" said Carrot urgently, "There's a fight going on!"
   Nobby glanced at the doorway. "O'course there is, " he said. "It's a dwarf bar. Worst kind. You keep out of there, kid. Them little buggers like to trip you up and then kick twelve kinds of shit out of you. You come along o'Nobby and he'll…"
   He grabbed Carrot's tree trunk arm. It was like try­ing to tow a building.
   Carrot had gone pale.
   "Dwarfs drinking? And fighting?" he said.
   "You bet, " said Nobby. "All the time. And they use the kind of language I wouldn't even use to my own dear mother. You don't want to mix it with them, they're a poisonous bunch of …, hey!, don't you go in there!…"
   ...
   No one knows why dwarfs, who at home in the moun­tains lead quiet, orderly lives, forget it all when they move to the big city. Something comes over even the most blameless iron-ore miner and prompts him to wear chain-mail all the time, carry an axe, change his name to something like Grabthroat Shinkicker and drink himself into surly oblivion.
   It's probably because they do live such quiet and orderly lives back home. After all, probably the first thing a young dwarf wants to do when he hits the big city after seventy years of working for his father at the bottom of a pit is have a big drink and then hit some­one.
   The fight was one of those enjoyable dwarfish fights with about a hundred participants and one hundred and fifty alliances. The screams, oaths and the ringing of axes on iron helmets mingled with the sounds of a drunken group by the fireplace who - another dwarfish custom - were singing about gold.
   Nobby bumped into the back of Carrot, who was watching the scene with horror.
   "Look, it's like this every night in here, " said Nobby. "Don't interfere, that's what the sergeant says. It's their ethnic folkways, or somethin'. You don't go messin' with ethnic folkways. "
   "But, but, " Carrot stuttered, "these are my people. Sort of. It's shameful, acting like this. What must ev­eryone think?"
   "We think they're mean little buggers, " said Nobby. "Now, come on!"
   But Carrot had waded into the scuffling mass. He cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed something in a language Nobby didn't understand. Practically any language including his native one would have fitted that description, but in this case it was Dwarfish.
   "Gr'duzk! Gr'duzk! aaK'zt ezem ke bur'k tze tzim?"[7]
   The fighting stopped. A hundred bearded faces glared up at Carrot's stooped figure, their annoyance mingled with surprise.
   A battered tankard bounced off his breastplate. Car­rot reached down and picked up a struggling figure, without apparent effort.
   "J'uk, ydtruz-t'rud-eztuza, hudr'zddezek drez'huk, huzukruk 't b 'tduz g 'ke 'k me 'ek b 'tduzt' be 'tk kce 'drutk ke'hkt'd. aaDb'thuk?"[8]
   No dwarf had ever heard so many Old Tongue words from the mouth of anyone over four feet high. They were astonished.
   Carrot lowered the offending dwarf to the floor. There were tears in his eyes.
   "You're dwarfs!" he said. "Dwarfs shouldn't be acting like this! Look at you all. Aren't you ashamed?"
   One hundred bone-hard jaws dropped.
   "I mean, look at you!" Carrot shook his head. "Can you imagine what your poor, white-bearded old mother, slaving away back in her little hole, wonder­ing how her son is getting on tonight, can you imag­ine what she'd think if she saw you now? Your own dear mothers, who first showed you how to use a pickaxe…"
   Nobby, standing by the doorway in terror and amazement, was aware of a growing chorus of nose-blowings and muffled sobs as Carrot went on: "…she's probably thinking, I expect he's having a quiet game of dominoes or something…"
   A nearby dwarf, wearing a helmet encrusted with six-inch spikes, started to cry gently into his beer.
   "And I bet it's a long time since any of you wrote her a letter, too, and you promised to write every week…"
   Nobby absent-mindedly took out a grubby handker­chief and passed it to a dwarf who was leaning against the wall, shaking with grief.
   "Now, then, " said Carrot kindly. "I don't want to be hard on anyone, but I shall be coming past here every night from now on and I shall expect to see proper standards of dwarf behavior. I know what it's like when you're far from home, but there's no excuse for this sort of thing. " He touched his helmet. "G'hruk, t'uk. "[9]
   He gave them all a bright smile and half-walked, half-crouched out of the bar. As he emerged into the street Nobby tapped him on the arm.
   "Don't you ever do anything like that to me again, " he fumed. "You're in the City Watch! Don't give me any more of this law business!"
   "But it is very important, " said Carrot seriously, trotting after Nobby as he sidled into a narrower street.
   "Not as important as stayin' in one piece, " said Nobby. "Dwarf bars! If you've got any sense, my lad, you'll come in here. And shut up. "
   Carrot stared up at the building they had reached. It was set back a little from the mud of the street. The sounds of considerable drinking were coming from in­side. A battered sign hung over the door. It showed a drum.
   "A tavern, is it?" said Carrot, thoughtfully. "Open at this hour?"
   "Don't see why not, " said Nobby, pushing open the door. "Damn useful idea. The Mended Drum. "
   "And mere drinking?" Carrot thumbed hastily through the book.
   "I hope so, " said Nobby. He nodded to the troll which was employed by the Drum as a splatter, [10] "Evenin', Detritus. Just showing the new lad the ropes. "
   The troll grunted, and waved a crusted arm.
   The inside of the Mended Drum is now legendary as the most famous disreputable tavern on the Discworld, and such a feature of the city that, after recent unavoidable redecorations, the new owner spent days recreating the original patina of dirt, soot and less identifiable substances on the walls and imported a ton of pre-rotted rushes for the floor. The drinkers were the usual bunch of heroes, cut throats, mercenaries, desperadoes and villains, and only microscopic anal­ysis could have told which was which. Thick coils of smoke hung in the air, perhaps to avoid touching the walls.
   The conversation dipped fractionally as the two guards wandered in, and then rose to its former level. A couple of cronies waved to Nobby.
   He realized that Carrot was busy.
   "What you doin'?" he said. "And no talkin' about mothers, right?"
   "I'm taking notes," said Carrot, grimly. "I've got a notebook."
   "That's the ticket," said Nobby. "You'll like this place. I comes here every night for my supper."
   "How do you spell 'contravention'?" said Carrot, turning over a page.
   "I don't," said Nobby, pushing through the crowds. A rare impulse to generosity lodged in his mind. "What d'you want to drink?"
   "I don't think that would be very appropriate," said Carrot. "Anyway, Strong Drink is a Mocker."
   He was aware of a penetrating stare in the back of his neck, and turned and looked into the big, bland and gentle face of an orangutan.
   It was seated at the bar with a pint mug and a bowl of peanuts in front of it. It tilted its glass amicably towards Carrot and then drank deeply and noisily by apparently forming its lower lip into a sort of prehen­sile funnel and making a noise like a canal being drained.
   Carrot nudged Nobby.
   "There's a monk… " he began.
   "Don't say it!" said Nobby urgently. "Don't say the word! It's the Librarian. Works up at the University. Always comes down here for a nightcap of an eve­ning."
   "And people don't object?"
   "Why should they?" said Nobby. "He always stands his round, just like everyone else."
   Carrot turned and looked at the ape again. A num­ber of questions pressed for attention, such as: where does it keep its money? The Librarian caught his gaze, misinterpreted it, and gently pushed the bowl of pea­nuts towards him.
   Carrot pulled himself to his full impressive height and consulted his notebook. The afternoon spent read­ing The Laws and Ordinances had been well spent.
   "Who is the owner, proprietor, lessee, or landlord of these premises?'' he said to Nobby.
   "Wassat?" said the small guard. "Landlord? Well, I suppose Charley here is in charge tonight. Why?" He indicated a large, heavy-set man whose face was a net of scars; its owner paused in the act of spreading the dirt more evenly around some glasses by means of a damp cloth, and gave Carrot a conspiratorial wink.
   "Charley, this is Carrot," said Nobby. "He's stop­ping along of Rosie Palm's."
   "What, every night?" said Charley.
   Carrot cleared his throat.
   "If you are in charge," he intoned, "then it is my duty to inform you that you are under arrest."
   "A rest of what, friend?" said Charley, still polish­ing.
   "Under arrest," said Carrot, "with a view to the presentation of charges to whit l)(i) that on or about 18th Grune, at a place called the Mended Drum, Fil­igree Street, you did a) serve or b) did cause to serve alcoholic beverages after the hours of 12 (twelve) mid­night, contrary to the provisions of the Public Ale Houses (Opening) Act of 1678, and l)(ii) on or about 18th Grune, at a place called the Mended Drum, Fil­igree Street, you did serve or did cause to serve alco­holic beverages in containers other than of a size and capacity laid down by aforesaid Act, and 2)(i) that on or about 18th Grune, at a place called the Mended Drum, Filigree Street, you did allow customers to carry unsheathed edge weapons of a length greater than 7 (seven) inches, contrary to Section Three of said Act and 2)(ii) that on or about 18th Grune, at a place called the Mended Drum, Filigree Street, you did serve al­coholic beverages in premises apparently unlicensed for the sale and/or consumption of said beverages, contrary to Section Three of the aforesaid Act."
   There was dead silence as Carrot turned over an­other page, and went on: "It is also my duty to inform you that it is my intention to lay evidence before the Justices with a view to the consideration of charges under the Public Foregatherings (Gambling) Act, 1567, the Licensed Premises (Hygiene) Acts of 1433, 1456, 1463, 1465, er, and 1470 through 1690, and also," he glanced sideways at the Librarian, who knew trou­ble when he heard it coming and was hurriedly trying to finish his drink,"the Domestic and Domesticated Animals (Care and Protection) Act, 1673."
   The silence that followed held a rare quality of breathless anticipation as the assembled company waited to see what would happen next.
   Charley carefully put down the glass, whose smears had been buffed up to a brilliant shine, and looked down at Nobby.
   Nobby was endeavoring to pretend that he was totally alone and had no connection whatsoever with anyone who might be standing next to him and coincidentally wearing an identical uniform.
   "What'd he mean, Justices?" he said to Nobby. "There ain't no Justices."
   Nobby gave a terrified shrug.
   "New, is he?" said Charley.
   "Make it easy on yourself," said Carrot.
   "This is nothing personal, you understand," said Charley to Nobby. "It's just a wossname. Had a wiz­ard in here the other night talking about it. Sort of bendy educational thing, you know?" He appeared to think for a moment. "Learning curve. That was it. It's a learning curve. Detritus, get your big stony arse over here a moment."
   Generally, about this time in the Mended Drum, someone throws a glass. And, in fact, this now hap­pened.
   ...
   Captain Vimes ran up Short Street - the longest in the city, which shows the famous Morpork subtle sense of humour in a nutshell - with Sergeant Colon stumbling along behind, protesting.
   Nobby was outside the Drum, hopping from one foot to another. In times of danger he had a way of pro­pelling himself from place to place without apparently moving through the intervening space which could put any ordinary matter transporter to shame.
   " 'E's fighting in there!" he stuttered, grabbing the captain's arm.
   "All by himself?" said the captain.
   "No, with everyone!" shouted Nobby, hopping from one foot to the other.
   "Oh."
   Conscience said: There's three of you. He's wearing the same uniform. He's one of your men. Remember poor old Gaskin.
   Another part of his brain, the hated, despicable part which had nevertheless enabled him to survive in the Guards these past ten years, said: It's rude to butt in. We'll wait until he's finished, and then ask him if he wants any assistance. Besides, it isn't Watch policy to interfere in fights. It's a lot simpler to go in afterwards and arrest anyone recumbent.
   There was a crash as a nearby window burst out­wards and deposited a stunned fighter on the opposite side of the street.
   "I think," said the captain carefully, "that we'd better take prompt action."
   "That's right," said Sgt Colon, "a man could get hurt standing here."
   They sidled cautiously a little way down the street, where the sound of splintering wood and breaking glass wasn't so overpowering, and carefully avoided one another's eyes. There was the occasional scream from within the tavern, and every now and again a mysterious ringing noise, as though someone was hit­ting a gong with their knee.
   They stood in a little pool of embarrassed silence.
   "You had your holidays this year, Sergeant?" said Captain Vimes eventually, rocking back and forth on his heels.
   "Yessir. Sent the wife to Quirm last month, sir, to see her aunt."
   "Very nice at this time of year, I'm told."
   "Yessir."
   "All the geraniums and whatnot."
   A figure tumbled out of an upper window and crum­pled on the cobbles.
   "That's where they've got the floral sundial, isn't it?" said the captain desperately.
   "Yessir. Very nice, sir. All done with little flowers, sir."
   There was a sound like something hitting something else repeatedly with something heavy and wooden. Vimes winced.
   "I don't think he'd of been happy in the Watch, sir," said the sergeant, in a kindly voice.
   The door of the Mended Drum had been torn off during riots so often that specially-tempered hinges had recently been installed, and the fact that the next tremendous crash tore the whole door and doorframe out of the wall only showed that quite a lot of money had been wasted. A figure in the midst of the wreckage tried to raise itself on its elbows, groaned, and slumped back.
   "Well, it would seem that it's all…" the captain began, and Nobby said: "It's that bloody troll!"
   "What?" said Vimes.
   "It's the troll! The one they have on the door!"
   They advanced with extreme caution.
   It was, indeed, Detritus the splatter.
   It is very difficult to hurt a creature that is, to all intents and purposes, a mobile stone. Someone seemed to have managed it, though. The fallen figure was groaning like a couple of bricks being crushed together.
   "That's a turn up for the books," said the sergeant vaguely. All three of them turned and peered at the brightly-lit rectangle where the doorway had been. Things had definitely quietened down a bit in there.
   "You don't think," said the sergeant, "that he's winning, do you?''
   The captain thrust out his jaw. ' 'We owe it to our colleague and fellow officer," he said, "to find out."
   There was a whimper from behind them. They turned and saw Nobby hopping on one leg and clutch­ing a foot.
   "What's up with you, man?" said Vimes.
   Nobby made agonized noises.
   Sergeant Colon began to understand. Although cau­tious obsequiousness was the general tenor of Watch behaviour, there wasn't one member of the entire squad who hadn't, at some time, been at the wrong end of Detritus's fists. Nobby had merely tried to play catch-up in the very best traditions of policemen ev­erywhere.
   "He went and kicked him inna rocks, sir," he said.
   "Disgraceful," said the captain vaguely. He hesi­tated. "Do trolls have rocks?" he said.
   "Take it from me, sir."
   "Good grief," Vimes said. "Dame Nature moves in strange ways, doesn't she."
   "Right you are, sir," said the sergeant obediently.
   "And now," said the captain, drawing his sword, "forward!"
   "Yessir."
   "This means you too, Sergeant," the captain added.
   "Yessir."
   ...
   It was possibly the most circumspect advance in the history of military maneuvers, right down at the bot­tom end of the scale that things like the Charge of the Light Brigade are at the top of.
   They peered cautiously around the ravished door­way.
   There were a number of people sprawled across the tables, or what remained of the tables. Those who were still conscious looked unhappy about it.
   Carrot stood in the middle of the floor. His rusty chain mail was torn, his helmet was missing, he was swaying a little from side to side and one eye was already starting to swell, but he recognized the cap­tain, dropped the feebly-protesting customer he was holding, and threw a salute.
   "Beg to report thirty-one offences of Making an Af­fray, sir, and fifty-six cases of Riotous Behaviour, forty-one offences of Obstructing an Officer of the Watch in the Execution of his Duty, thirteen offences of Assault with a Deadly Weapon, six cases of Mali­cious Lingering, and-and-Corporal Nobby hasn't even shown me one rope yet…"
   He fell backwards, breaking a table.
   Captain Vimes coughed. He wasn't at all sure what you were supposed to do next. As far as he knew, the Watch had never been in this position before.
   ' 'I think you should get him a drink, Sergeant,'' he said.
   "Yessir."
   "And get me one, too."
   "Yessir."
   "Have one yourself, why don't you."
   "Yessir."
   "And you, Corporal, will you please - what are you doing?"
   "Searching-the-bodies-sir," said Nobby quickly, straightening up. "For incriminating evidence, and that."
   "In their money pouches?''
   Nobby thrust his hands behind his back. "You never know, sir," he said.
   The sergeant had located a miraculously unbroken bottle of spirits in the wreckage and forced a lot of its contents between Carrot's lips.
   "What we going to do with all this lot, Captain?" he said over his shoulder.
   "I haven't the faintest," said Vimes, sitting down. The Watch jail was just about big enough for six very small people, which were usually the only sort to be put in it. Whereas these…
   He looked around him desperately. There was Nork the Impaler, lying under a table and making bubbling noises. There was Big Henri. There was Grabber Simmons, one of the most feared bar-room fighters in the city. All in all, there were a lot of people it wouldn't pay to be near when they woke up.
   "We could cut their throats, sir," said Nobby, veteran of a score of residual battlefields. He had found an unconscious fighter who was about the right size and was speculatively removing his boots, which looked quite new and about the right size.
   "That would be entirely wrong," said Vimes. He wasn't sure how you actually went about cutting a throat. It had never hitherto been an option.
   "No," he said, "I think perhaps we'll let them off with a caution."
   There was a groan from under the bench.
   "Besides," he went on quickly, "we should get our fallen comrade to a place of safety as soon as possi­ble."
   "Good point," said the sergeant. He took a swig of the spirits, for the sake of his nerves.
   The two of them managed to sling Carrot between them and guide his wobbling legs up the steps. Vimes, collapsing under the weight, looked around for Nobby.
   "Corporal Nobbs," he rasped, "why are you kick­ing people when they're down?"
   "Safest way, sir," said Nobby.
   Nobby had long ago been told about fighting fair and not striking a fallen opponent, and had then given some creative thought to how these rules applied to someone four feet tall with the muscle tone of an elas­tic band.
   "Well, stop it. I want you to caution the felons," said the captain.
   "How, sir?"
   "Well, you…" Captain Vimes stopped. He was blowed if he knew. He'd never done it.
   "Just do it," he snapped. "Surely I don't have to tell you everything?''
   Nobby was left alone at the top of the stairs. A gen­eral muttering and groaning from the floor indicated that people were waking up. Nobby thought quickly. He shook an admonitory cheese-straw of a finger.
   "Let that be a lesson to you," he said. "Don't do it again.''
   And ran for it.
   Up in the darkness of the rafters the Librarian scratched himself reflectively. Life was certainly full of surprises. He was going to watch developments with interest. He shelled a thoughtful peanut with his feet, and swung away into the darkness.
 

The Supreme Grand Master raised his hands.
   "Are the Thuribles of Destiny ritually chastised, that Evil and Loose Thinking may be banished from this Sanctified Circle?"
   "Yep."
   The Supreme Grand Master lowered his hands.
   "Yep?" he said.
   "Yep," said Brother Dunnykin happily. "Done it myself."
   "You are supposed to say 'Yea, O Supreme One'," said the Supreme Grand Master. "Honestly, I've told you enough times, if you're not all going to enter into the spirit of the thing-"
   "Yes, you listen to what the Supreme Grand Master tells you," said Brother Watchtower, glaring at the errant Brother.
   "I spent hours chastising them thuribles," muttered Brother Dunnykin.
   "Carry on, O Supreme Grand Master," said Brother Watchtower.
   "Very well, then," said the Grand Master. "To­night we'll try another experimental summoning. I trust you have obtained suitable raw material, broth­ers?"
   "…scrubbed and scrubbed, not that you get any thanks…''
   "All sorted out, Supreme Grand Master," said Brother Watchtower.
   It was, the Grand Master conceded, a slightly better collection. The Brothers had certainly been busy. Pride of place was given to an illuminated tavern sign whose removal, the Grand Master thought, should have mer­ited some sort of civic aware. At the moment the E was a ghastly pink and flashed on and off at random.
   "I got that," said Brother Watchtower proudly. "They thought I was mending it or something, but I took my screwdriver and I.."
   "Yes, well done," said the Supreme Grand Master. "Shows initiative."
   "Thank you, Supreme Grand Master," beamed Brother Watchtower.
   ''…knuckles rubbed raw, all red and cracked. Never even got my three dollars back, either, no one as much as says…''
   "And now," said the Supreme Grand Master, tak­ing up the book, "we will begin to commence. Shut up, Brother Dunnykin."
   ...
   Every town in the multiverse has a part that is some­thing like Ankh-Morpork's Shades. It's usually the oldest part, its lanes faithfully following the original tracks of medieval cows going down to the river, and they have names like the Shambles, the Rookery, Sniggs Alley . . .
   Most of Ankh-Morpork is like that in any case. But the Shades was even more so, a sort of black hole of bred-in-the-brickwork lawlessness. Put it like this: even the criminals were afraid to walk the streets. The Watch didn't set foot in it.
   They were accidentally setting foot in it now. Not very reliably. It had been a trying night, and they had been steadying their nerves. They were now so steady that all four were relying on the other three to keep them upright and steer.
   Captain Vimes passed the bottle back to the ser­geant.
   "Shame on, on, on…," he thought for a bit, "…you," he said. "Drun' in fron' of a super, super, superererer ofisiler."
   The sergeant tried to speak, but could only come out with a series of esses.
   "Put yoursel' onna charge," said Captain Vimes, rebounding off a wall. He glared at the brickwork. "This wall assaulted me," he declared. "Hah! Think you're tough, eh! Well, 'm a ofisler of, of, of the Law, I'll-have-you-know, and we don' take any, any, any."
   He blinked slowly, once or twice.
   "What's it we don' take any of, Sar'nt?" he said.
   "Chances, sir?" said Colon.
   "No, no, no. S'other stuff. Never mind. Anyway, we don' take any of, of, of it from anyone." Vague visions were trotting through his mind, of a room full of criminal types, people that had jeered at him, peo­ple whose very existence had offended and taunted him for years, lying around and groaning. He was a little unclear how it had happened, but some almost forgot­ten part of him, some much younger Vimes with a bright shining breastplate and big hopes, a Vimes he thought the alcohol had long ago drowned, was sud­denly restless.
   "Shallie, shallie, shallie tell you something, Sarn't?" he said.
   "Sir?'' The four of them bounced gently off another wall and began another slow crabwise waltz across the alley.
   "This city. This city. This city, Sar'nt. This city is a, is a, is a Woman, Sarn't. So t'is. A Woman, Sarn't. Ancient raddled old beauty, Sarn't. Buti-you-fall-in-love-with-her, then, then, then she-kicks-you-inna-teeth-"
   " 's woman?" said Colon.
   He screwed up his sweating face with the effort of thought.
   " 'S eight miles wide, sir.'S gotta river in it. Lots of, of houses and stuff, sir," he reasoned.
   "Ah. Ah. Ah." Vimes waggled an unsteady finger at him. "Never, never, never said it wasa small woman, did I. Be fair." He waved the bottle. Another random thought exploded in the froth of his mind.
   "We showed 'em, anyway," he said excitedly, as the four of them began an oblique shuffle back to the opposite wall. "Showed them, dint we? Taught thema forget they won't lesson inna hurry, eh?"
   "S'right," said the sergeant, but not very enthusi­astically. He was still wondering about his superior officer's sex life.
   But Vimes was in the kind of mood that didn't need encouragement.
   "Hah!" he shouted, at the dark alleyways. "Don' like it, eh? Taste of your, your, your own medicine thingy. Well, now you can bootle in your trems!" He threw the empty bottle into the air.
   "Two o'clock!" he yelled. "And all's weeeellll!"
   Which was astonishing news to the various shadowy figures who had been silently shadowing the four of them for some time. Only sheer puzzlement had pre­vented them making their attentions sharp and plain. These people are clearly guards, they were thinking, they've got the right helmets and everything, and yet here they are in the Shades. So they were being watched with the fascination that a pack of wolves might focus on a handful of sheep who had not only trotted into the clearing, but were making playful butts and baa-ing noises; the outcome was, of course, going to be mutton but in the meantime inquisitiveness gave a stay of execution.
   Carrot raised his muzzy head.
   "Where're we?" he groaned.
   "On our way home," said the sergeant. He looked up at the pitted, worm-eaten and knife-scored sign above them. "We're jus' goin' down, goin' down, goin' down…" he squinted"…Sweetheart Lane."
   "Sweetheart Lane s'not on the way home," slurred Nobby. "We wouldn't wanta go down Sweetheart Lane, it's in the Shades. Catch us goin' down Sweet­heart Lane-"
   There was a crowded moment in which realization did the icy work of a good night's sleep and several pints of black coffee. The three of them, by unspoken agreement, clustered up towards Carrot.
   "What we gonna do, Captain?" said Colon.
   "Er. We could call for help," said the captain un­certainly.
   "What, here?"
   "You've got a point."
   "I reckon we must of turned left out of Silver Street instead of right," quavered Nobby.
   "Well, that's one mistake we won't make again in a hurry," said the captain. Then he wished he hadn't.
   They could hear footsteps. Somewhere off to their left, there was a snigger.
   "We must form a square," said the captain. They all tried to form a point.
   "Hey! What was that?" said Sergeant Colon.
   "What?"
   "There it was again. Sort of a leathery sound."
   Captain Vimes tried not to think about hoods and garrotting.
   There were, he knew, many gods. There was a god for every trade. There was a beggars' god, a whores' goddess, a thieves' god, probably even an assassins' god.
   He wondered whether there was, somewhere in that vast pantheon, a god who would look kindly on hard-pressed and fairly innocent law-enforcement officers who were quite definitely about to die.
   There probably wasn't, he thought bitterly. Some­thing like that wasn't stylish enough for gods. Catch any god worrying about any poor sod trying to do his best for a handful of dollars a month. Not them. Gods went overboard for smart bastards whose idea of a day's work was prizing the Ruby Eye of the Earwig King out of its socket, not for some unimaginative sap who just pounded the pavement every night . . .
   "More sort of slithery," said the sergeant, who liked to get things right.
   And then there was a sound…
   …perhaps a volcanic sound, or the sound of a boil­ing geyser, but at any rate a long, dry roar of a sound, like the bellows in the forges of the Titans…
   …but it was not so bad as the light, which was blue-white and the sort of light to print the pattern of your eyeballs' blood vessels on the back of the inside of your skull.
   They both went on for hundreds of years and then, instantly, stopped.
   The dark aftermath was filled with purple images and, once the ears regained an ability to hear, a faint, clinkery sound.
   The guards remained perfectly still for some time.
   "Well, well," said the captain weakly.
   After a further pause he said, very clearly, every consonant slotting perfectly into place, "Sergeant, take some men and investigate that, will you?"
   "Investigate what, sir?" said Colon, but it had al­ready dawned on the captain that if the sergeant took some men it would leave him, Captain Vimes, all alone.
   "No, I've a better idea. We'll all go," he said firmly. They all went.
   Now that their eyes were used to the darkness they could see an indistinct red glow ahead of them.
   It turned out to be a wall, cooling rapidly. Bits of calcined brickwork were falling off as they contracted, making little pinging noises.
   That wasn't the worst bit. The worst bit was what was on the wall.
   They stared at it.
   They stared at it for a long time.
   It was only an hour or two till dawn, and no one even suggested trying to find their way back in the dark. They waited by the wall. At least it was warm.
   They tried not to look at it.
   Eventually Colon stretched uneasily and said, ' 'Chin up, Captain. It could have been worse."
   Vimes finished the bottle. It didn't have any effect. There were some types of sobriety that you just couldn't budge.
   "Yes," he said. "It could have been us."
   ...
   The Supreme Grand Master opened his eyes.
   "Once again," he said, "we have achieved suc­cess."
   The Brethren burst into a ragged cheer. The Broth­ers Watchtower and Fingers linked arms and danced an enthusiastic jig in their magic circle.
   The Supreme Grand Master took a deep breath.
   First the carrot, he thought, and now the stick. He liked the stick.
   "Silence!" he screamed.
   "Brother Fingers, Brother Watchtower, cease this shameful display!" he screeched. "The rest of you, be silent!"
   They quietened down, like rowdy children who have just seen the teacher come into the room. Then they quieted down a lot more, like children who have just seen the teacher's expression.
   The Supreme Grand Master let this sink in, and then stalked along their ragged ranks.
   "I suppose," he said, "that we think we've done some magic, do we? Hmm? Brother Watchtower?"
   Brother Watchtower swallowed. "Well, er, you said we were, er, I mean…"
   "You haven't done ANYTHING yet!''
   "Well, er, no, er…" Brother Watchtower trembled.
   "Do real wizards leap about after a tiny spell and start chanting 'Here we go, here we go, here we go', Brother Watchtower? Hmm?"
   "Well, we were sort of…"
   The Supreme Grand Master spun on his heel.
   "And do they keep looking apprehensively at the woodwork, Brother Plasterer? "
   Brother Plasterer hung his head. He hadn't realized anyone had noticed.
   When the tension was twanging satisfactorily, like a bowstring, the Supreme Grand Master stood back.
   "Why do I bother?" he said, shaking his head. "I could have chosen anyone. I could have picked the best. But I've got a bunch of children. "
   "Er, honest," said Brother Watchtower, "we was making an effort, I mean, we was really concentrating. Weren't we, lads?"
   "Yes," they chorused. The Supreme Grand Master glared at them.
   "There's no room in this Brotherhood for Brothers who are not behind us all the way," he warned.
   With almost visible relief the Brethren, like pan­icked sheep who see that a hurdle has been opened in the fold, galloped towards the opening.
   "No worries about that, your supremity," said Brother Watchtower fervently.
   "Commitment must be our watchword!" said the Supreme Grand Master.
   "Watchword. Yeah," said Brother Watchtower. He nudged Brother Plasterer, whose eyes had strayed to the skirting board again.
   "Wha? Oh. Yeah. Watchword. Yeah," said Brother Plasterer.
   "And trust and fraternity," said the Supreme Grand Master.
   "Yeah. And them, too," said Brother Fingers.
   "So," said the Supreme Grand Master, "if there be any one here not anxious, yea, eager to continue in this great work, let him step forward now.''
   No one moved.
   They're hooked. Ye gods, I'm good at this, thought the Supreme Grand Master. I can play on their horri­ble little minds like a xylophone. It's amazing, the sheer power of mundanity. Who'd have thought that weakness could be a greater force than strength? But you have to know how to direct it. And I do.
   "Very well, then," he said. "And now, we will repeat the Oath."
   He led their stumbling, terrified voices through it, noting with approval the strangled way they said 'figgin'. And he kept one eye on Brother Fingers, too.
   He's slightly brighter than the others, he thought. Slightly less gullible, at least. Better make sure I'm always the last to leave. Don't want any clever ideas about following me home.
   ...
   You need a special kind of mind to rule a city like Ankh-Morpork, and Lord Vetinari had it. But then, he was a special kind of person.
   He baffled and infuriated the lesser merchant princes, to the extent that they had long ago given up trying to assassinate him and now merely jockeyed for position amongst themselves. Anyway, any assassin who tried to attack the Patrician would be hard put to it to find enough flesh to insert the dagger.
   While other lords dined on larks stuffed with pea­cocks' tongues, Lord Vetinari considered that a glass of boiled water and half a slice of dry bread was an elegant sufficiency.
   It was exasperating. He appeared to have no vice that anyone could discover. You'd have thought, with that pale, equine face, that he'd incline towards stuff with whips, needles, and young women in dungeons. The other lords could have accepted that. Nothing wrong with whips and needles, in moderation. But the Patrician apparently spent his evenings studying re­ports and, on special occasions, if he could stand the excitement, playing chess.
   He wore black a lot. It wasn't particularly impres­sive black, such as the best assassins wore, but the sober, slightly shabby black of a man who doesn't want to waste time in the mornings wondering what to wear. And you had to get up very early in the morning to get the better of the Patrician; in fact, it was wiser not to go to bed at all.
   But he was popular, in a way. Under his hand, for the first time in a thousand years, Ankh-Morpork op­erated. It might not be fair or just or particularly dem­ocratic, but it worked. He tended it as one tends a topiary bush, encouraging a growth here, pruning an errant twig there. It was said that he would tolerate absolutely anything apart from anything that threat­ened the city[11], and here it was . . .
   He stared at the stricken wall for a long time, while the rain dripped off his chin and soaked his clothes. Behind him, Wonse hovered nervously.
   Then one long, thin, blue-veined hand reached out and the fingertips traced the shadows.
   Well, not so much shadows, more a series of sil­houettes. The outline was very distinct. Inside, there was the familiar pattern of brickwork. Outside, though, something had fused the wall in a rather nice ceramic substance, giving the ancient flettons a melted, mirror-like finish.
   The shapes outlined in brickwork showed a tableau of six men frozen in an attitude of surprise. Various upraised hands had quite clearly been holding knives and cutlasses.
   Then Patrician looked down silently on the pile of ash at his feet. A few streaks of molten metal might once have been the very same weapons that were now so decisively etched into the wall.
   "Hmm," he said.
   Captain Vimes respectfully led him across the lane and into Fast Luck Alley, where he pointed out Ex­hibit A, to whit . . .
   "Footprints," he said. "Which is stretching it a bit, sir. They're more what you'd call claws. One might go so far as to say talons."
   The Patrician stared at the prints in the mud. His expression was quite unreadable.
   "I see," he said eventually. "And do you have an opinion about all this, Captain?"
   The captain did. In the hours until dawn he'd had all sorts of opinions, starting with a conviction that it had been a big mistake to be born.
   And then the grey light had filtered even into the Shades, and he was still alive and uncooked, and had looked around him with an expression of idiot relief and seen, not a yard away, these footprints. That had not been a good moment to be sober.
   "Well, sir," he said, "I know that dragons have been extinct for thousands of years, sir…"
   "Yes?" The Patrician's eyes narrowed.
   Vimes plunged on. "But, sir, the thing is, do they know? Sergeant Colon said he heard a leathery sound just before, just before, just before the, er . . . of­fence."
   "So you think an extinct, and indeed a possibly en­tirely mythical, dragon flew into the city, landed in this narrow alley, incinerated a group of criminals, and then flew away?" said the Patrician. "One might say, it was a very public-spirited creature."
   "Well, when you put it like that…"
   "If I recall, the dragons of legend were solitary and rural creatures who shunned people and dwelt in for­saken, out of the way places," said the Patrician. "They were hardly urban creatures."
   "No, sir," said the captain, repressing a comment that if you wanted to find a really forsaken, out of the way place then the Shades would fit the bill pretty well.
   "Besides," said Lord Vetinari, "one would imag­ine that someone would have noticed, wouldn't you agree?"
   The captain nodded at the wall and its dreadful frieze. "Apart from them, you mean, sir?"
   "In my opinion," said Lord Vetinari, "it's some kind of warfare. Possibly a rival gang has hired a wiz­ard. A little local difficulty."
   "Could be linked to all this strange thieving, sir," volunteered Wonse.
   "But there's the footprints, sir," said Vimes dog­gedly.
   "We're close to the river," said the Patrician. "Pos­sibly it was, perhaps, a wading bird of some sort. A mere coincidence," he added, "but I should cover them over, if I were you. We don't want people getting the wrong idea and jumping to silly conclusions, do we?" he added sharply.
   Vimes gave in.
   "As you wish, sir," he said, looking at his sandals.
   The Patrician patted him on the shoulder.
   "Never mind," he said. "Carry on. Good show of initiative, that man. Patrolling in the Shades, too. Well done."
   He turned, and almost walked into the wall of chain mail that was Carrot.
   To his horror, Captain Vimes saw his newest recruit point politely to the Patrician's coach. Around it, fully-armed and wary, were six members of the Palace Guard, who straightened up and took a wary interest. Vimes disliked them intensely. They had plumes on their helmets. He hated plumes on a guard.
   He heard Carrot say. "Excuse me, sir, is this your coach, sir?" and the Patrician looked him blankly up and down and said, "It is. Who are you, young man?"
   Carrot saluted. "Lance-constable Carrot, sir."
   "Carrot, Carrot. That name rings a bell."
   Lupine Wonse, who had been hovering behind him, whispered in the Patrician's ear. His face brightened.' 'Ah, the young thief-taker. A little error there, I think, but commendable. No person is above the law, eh?"
   "No, sir," said Carrot.
   "Commendable, commendable," said the Patri­cian. "And now, gentlemen-"
   "About your coach, sir," said Carrot doggedly, "I couldn't help noticing that the front offside wheel, contrary to the-"
   He's going to arrest the Patrician, Vimes told him­self, the thought trickling through his brain like an icy rivulet. He's actually going to arrest the Patrician. The supreme ruler. He's going to arrest him. This is what he's actually going to do. The boy doesn't know the meaning of the word 'fear'. Oh, wouldn't it be a good idea if he knew the meaning of the word 'survival' . . .
   And I can't get my jaw muscles to move.
   We're all dead. Or worse, we're all detained at the Patrician's pleasure. And as we all know, he's seldom that pleased.
   It was at this precise moment that Sergeant Colon earned himself a metaphorical medal.
   "Lance-constable Carrot!" he shouted. "Attention! Lance-constable Carrot, abou-uta turna! Lance-constable Carrot, qui-uck marcha!''
   Carrot brought himself to attention like a barn being raised and stared straight ahead with a ferocious expression of acute obedience.
   "Well done, that man," said the Patrician thought­fully, as Carrot strode stiffly away. "Carry on, Cap­tain. And do come down heavily on any silly rumours about dragons, right?"
   "Yes, sir," said Captain Vimes.
   "Good man."
   The coach rattled off, the bodyguard running along­side.
   Behind him, Captain Vimes was only vaguely aware of the sergeant yelling at the retreating Carrot to stop.
   He was thinking.
   He looked at the prints in the mud. He used his regulation pike, which he knew was exactly seven feet long, to measure their size and the distance between them. He whistled under his breath. Then, with con­siderable caution, he followed the alley around the corner; it led to a small, padlocked and dirt-encrusted door in the back of a timber warehouse.
   There was something very wrong, he thought.
   The prints come out of the alley, but they don't go in. And we don't often get any wading birds in the Ankh, mainly because the pollution would eat their legs away and anyway, it's easier for them to walk on the surface.
   He looked up. A myriad washing lines criss-crossed the narrow rectangle of the sky as efficiently as a net.
   So, he thought, something big and fiery came out of this alley but didn't come into it.
   And the Patrician is very worried about it.
   I've been told to forget about it.
   He noticed something else at the side of the alley, and bent down and picked up a fresh, empty peanut shell.
   He tossed it from hand to hand, staring at nothing.
   Right now, he needed a drink. But perhaps it ought to wait.
   ...
   The Librarian knuckled his way urgently along the dark aisles between the slumbering bookshelves.
   The rooftops of the city belonged to him. Oh, as­sassins and thieves might make use of them, but he'd long ago found the forest of chimneys, buttresses, gar­goyles and weathervanes a convenient and somehow comforting alternative to the streets.
   At least, up until now.
   It had seemed amusing and instructive to follow the Watch into the Shades, an urban jungle which held no fears for a 300-lb ape. But now the nightmare he had seen while brachiating across a dark alley would, if he had been human, have made him doubt the evidence of his own eyes.
   As an ape, he had no doubts whatsoever about his eyes and believed them all the time.
   Right now he wanted to concentrate them urgently on a book that might hold a clue. It was in a section no one bothered with much these days; the books in there were not really magical. Dust lay accusingly on the floor.
   Dust with footprints in it.
   "Oook?" said the Librarian, in the warm gloom.
   He proceeded cautiously now, realizing with a sense of inevitability that the footprints seemed to have the same destination in mind as he did.
   He turned a corner and there it was.
   The section.
   The bookcase.
   The shelf.
   The gap.
   There are many horrible sights in the multiverse. Somehow, though, to a soul attuned to the subtle rhythms of a library, there are few worse sights than a hole where a book ought to be.
   Someone had stolen a book.
   ...
   In the privacy of the Oblong Office, his personal sanctum, the Patrician paced up and down. He was dictating a stream of instructions.
   "And send some men to paint that wall," he fin­ished.
   Lupine Wonse raised an eyebrow.
   "Is that wise, sir?" he said.
   "You don't think a frieze of ghastly shadows will cause comment and speculation?" said the Patrician sourly.
   "Not as much as fresh paint in the Shades," said Wonse evenly.
   The Patrician hesitated a moment. "Good point," he snapped. "Have some men demolish it."
   He reached the end of the room, spun on his heel, and stalked up it again. Dragons! As if there were not enough important, enough real things to take up his time.
   "Do you believe in dragons?" he said.
   Wonse shook his head. "They're impossible, sir."
   "So I've heard," said Lord Vetinari. He reached the opposite wall, turned.
   "Would you like me to investigate further?" said Wonse.
   "Yes. Do so."
   "And I shall ensure the Watch take great care," said Wonse.
   The Patrician stopped his pacing. "The Watch? The Watch? My dear chap, the Watch are a bunch of in­competents commanded by a drunkard. It's taken me years to achieve it. The last thing we need to concern ourselves with is the Watch."
   He thought for a moment. "Ever seen a dragon, Wonse? One of the big ones, I mean? Oh, they're im­possible. You said."
   "They're just legend, really. Superstition," said Wonse.
   "Hmm," said the Patrician. "And the thing about legends, of course, is that they are legendary."
   "Exactly, sir."
   "Even so…" The Patrician paused, and stared at Wonse for some time. "Oh, well," he said. "Sort it out. I'm not having any of this dragon business. It's the type of thing that makes people restless. Put a stop to it."
   When he was alone he stood and looked out gloom­ily over the twin city. It was drizzling again.
   Ankh-Morpork! Brawling city of a hundred thou­sand souls! And, as the Patrician privately observed, ten times that number of actual people. The fresh rain glistened on the panorama of towers and rooftops, all unaware of the teeming, rancorous world it was drop­ping into. Luckier rain fell on upland sheep, or whis­pered gently over forests, or patterned somewhat incestuously into the sea. Rain that fell on Ankh-Morpork, though, was rain that was in trouble. They did terrible things to water, in Ankh-Morpork. Being drunk was only the start of its problems.
   The Patrician liked to feel that he was looking out over a city that worked. Not a beautiful city, or a re­nowned city, or a well-drained city, and certainly not an architecturally favoured city; even its most enthu­siastic citizens would agree that, from a high point of vantage, Ankh-Morpork looked as though someone had tried to achieve in stone and wood an effect nor­mally associated with the pavements outside all-night takeaways.
   But it worked. It spun along cheerfully like a gyro­scope on the lip of a catastrophe curve. And this, the Patrician firmly believed, was because no one group was ever powerful enough to push it over. Merchants, thieves, assassins, wizards-all competed energeti­cally in the race without really realizing that it needn't be a race at all, and certainly not trusting one another enough to stop and wonder who had marked out the course and was holding the starting flag.
   The Patrician disliked the word 'dictator.' It af­fronted him. He never told anyone what to do. He didn't have to, that was the wonderful part. A large part of his life consisted of arranging matters so that this state of affairs continued.
   Of course, there were various groups seeking his overthrow, and this was right and proper and the sign of a vigorous and healthy society. No one could call him unreasonable about the matter. Why, hadn't he founded most of them himself? And what was so beau­tiful was the way in which they spent nearly all their time bickering with one another.
   Human nature, the Patrician always said, was a mar­vellous thing. Once you understood where its levers were.
   He had an unpleasant premonition about this dragon business. If ever there was a creature that didn't have any obvious levers, it was a dragon. It would have to be sorted out.

The Patrician didn't believe in unnecessary cru­elty.[12] He did not believe in pointless revenge. But he was a great believer in the need for things to be sorted out.
   Funnily enough, Captain Vimes was thinking the same thing. He found he didn't like the idea of citi­zens, even of the Shades, being turned into a mere ceramic tint.
   And it had been done in front of the Watch, more or less. As if the Watch didn't matter, as if the Watch was just an irrelevant detail. That was what rankled.
   Of course, it was true. That only made it worse.
   What was making him even angrier was that he had disobeyed orders. He had scuffed up the tracks, cer­tainly. But in the bottom drawer of his ancient desk, hidden under a pile of empty bottles, was a plaster cast. He could feel it staring at him through three lay­ers of wood.
   He couldn't imagine what had got into him. And now he was going even further out on to the limb.
   He reviewed his, for want of a better word, troops. He'd asked the senior pair to turn up in plain clothes. This meant that Sergeant Colon, who'd worn uniform all his life, was looking red-faced and uncomfortable in the suit he wore for funerals. Whereas Nobby…
   "I wonder if I made the word 'plain' clear enough?" said Captain Vimes.
   "It's what I wear outside work, guv," said Nobby reproachfully.
   "Sir," corrected Sergeant Colon.
   "My voice is in plain clothes too," said Nobby. "Initiative, that is."
   Vimes walked slowly around the corporal.
   "And your plain clothes do not cause old women to faint and small boys to run after you in the street?" he said.
   Nobby shifted uneasily. He wasn't at home with irony.
   "No, sir, guv," he said. "It's all the go, this style."
   This was broadly true. There was a current fad in Ankh for big, feathered hats, ruffs, slashed doublets with gold frogging, flared pantaloons and boots with ornamental spurs. The trouble was, Vimes reflected, that most of the fashion-conscious had more body to go between these component bits, whereas all that could be said of Corporal Nobbs was that he was in there somewhere.
   It might be advantageous. After all, absolutely no one would ever believe, when they saw him coming down the street, that here was a member of the Watch trying to look inconspicuous.
   It occurred to Vimes that he knew absolutely noth­ing about Nobbs outside working hours. He couldn't even remember where the man lived. All these years he'd known the man and he'd never realized that, in his secret private life, Corporal Nobbs was a bit of a peacock. A very short peacock, it was true, a peacock that had been hit repeatedly with something heavy, perhaps, but a peacock nonetheless. It just went to show, you never could tell.
   He brought his attention back to the business in hand.
   "I want you two," he said to Nobbs and Colon, "to mingle unobtrusively, or obtrusively in your case, Cor­poral Nobbs, with people tonight and, er, see if you can detect anything unusual."
   "Unusual like what?" said the sergeant.
   Vimes hesitated. He wasn't exactly sure himself. '' Anything," he said, " pertinent.''
   "Ah." The sergeant nodded wisely. "Pertinent. Right."
   There was an awkward silence.
   "Maybe people have seen weird things," said Cap­tain Vimes. "Or perhaps there have been unexplained fires. Or footprints. You know," he finished, desper­ately, "signs of dragons."
   "You mean, like, piles of gold what have been slept on," said the sergeant.
   "And virgins being chained to rocks," said Nobbs, knowingly.
   "I can see you're experts," sighed Vimes. "Just do the best you can."
   "This mingling," said Sergeant Colon delicately, "it would involve going into taverns and drinking and similar, would it?"
   "To a certain extent," said Vimes.
   "Ah," said the sergeant, happily.
   "In moderation."
   "Right you are, sir."
   "And at your own expense."
   "Oh."
   "But before you go," said the captain, "do either of you know anyone who might know anything about dragons? Apart from sleeping on gold and the bit with the young women, I mean."
   "Wizards would," volunteered Nobby.
   "Apart from wizards," said Vimes firmly. You couldn't trust wizards. Every guard knew you couldn't trust wizards. They were even worse than civilians.
   Colon thought about it. "There's always Lady Ramkin," he said. "Lives in Scoone Avenue. Breeds swamp dragons. You know, the little buggers people keep as pets?"
   "Oh, her," said Vimes gloomily. "I think I've seen her around. The one with the 'Whinny If You Love Dragons' sticker on the back of her carriage?"
   "That's her. She's mental," said Sergeant Colon.
   "What do you want me to do, sir?" said Carrot.
   "Er. You have the most important job," said Vimes hurriedly. "I want you to stay here and watch the of­fice."
   Carrot's face broadened in a slow, unbelieving grin.
   "You mean I'm left in charge, sir?" he said.
   "In a manner of speaking," said Vimes. "But you're not allowed to arrest anyone, understand?" he added quickly.
   "Not even if they're breaking the law, sir?"
   "Not even then. Just make a note of it."
   "I'll read my book, then," said Carrot. "And pol­ish my helmet.''
   "Good boy," said the captain. It should be safe enough, he thought. No one ever comes in here, not even to report a lost dog. No one ever thinks about the Watch. You'd have to be really out of touch to go to the Watch for help, he thought bitterly.
   ...
   Scoone Avenue was a wide, tree-lined, and incredibly select part of Ankh, high enough above the river to be away from its all-pervading smell. People in Scoone Avenue had old money, which was supposed to be much better than new money, although Captain Vimes had never had enough of either to spot the difference. People in Scoone Avenue had their own personal bodyguards. People in Scoone Avenue were said to be so aloof they wouldn't even talk to the gods. This was a slight slander. They would talk to gods, if they were well-bred gods of decent family.
   Lady Ramkin's house was not hard to find. It com­manded an outcrop that gave it a magnificent view of the city, if that was your idea of a good time. There were stone dragons on the gatepost, and the gardens had an unkempt overgrown look. Statues of Ramkins long gone loomed up out of the greenery. Most of them had swords and were covered in ivy up to the neck.
   Vimes sensed that this was not because the garden's owner was too poor to do anything about it, but rather that the garden's owner thought there were much more important things than ancestors, which was a pretty unusual point of view for an aristocrat.
   They also apparently thought that there were more important things than property repair. When he rang the bell of the rather pleasant old house itself, in the middle of a flourishing rhododendron forest, several bits of the plaster facade fell off.
   That seemed to be the only effect, except that some­thing round the back of the house started to howl. Some things.
   It started to rain again. After a while Vimes felt the dignity of his position and cautiously edged around the building, keeping well back in case anything else col­lapsed.
   He reached a heavy wooden gate in a heavy wooden wall. In contrast with the general decrepitude of the rest of the place, it seemed comparatively new and very solid.
   He knocked. This caused another fusillade of strange whistling noises.
   The door opened. Something dreadful loomed over him.
   "Ah, good man. Do you know anything about mat­ing?" it boomed.
   ...
   It was quiet and warm in the Watch House. Carrot listened to the hissing of sand in the hourglass and concentrated on buffing up his breastplate. Centuries of tarnish had given up under his cheerful onslaught. It gleamed.
   You knew where you were with a shiny breastplate. The strangeness of the city, where they had all these laws and concentrated on ignoring them, was too much for him. But a shiny breastplate was a breastplate well shined.
   The door opened. He peered across the top of the ancient desk. There was no one there.
   He tried a few more industrious rubs.
   There was the vague sound of someone who had got fed up with waiting. Two purple-fingernailed hands grasped the edge of the desk, and the Librarian's face rose slowly into view like an early-morning coconut.
   "Oook," he said.
   Carrot stared. It had been explained to him carefully that, contrary to appearances, laws governing the an­imal kingdom did not apply to the Librarian. On the other hand, the Librarian himself was never very in­terested in obeying the laws governing the human kingdom, either. He was one of those little anomalies you have to build around.
   "Hallo," said Carrot uncertainly. ("Don't call him 'boy' or pat him, that always gets him annoyed.")
   "Oook."
   The Librarian prodded the desk with a long, many-jointed finger.
   "What?"
   "Oook. "
   "Sorry?"
   The Librarian rolled his eyes. It was strange, he felt, that so-called intelligent dogs, horses and dolphins never had any difficulty indicating to humans the vital news of the moment, e.g., that the three children were lost in the cave, or the train was about to take the line leading to the bridge that had been washed away or similar, while he, only a handful of chromosomes away from wearing a vest, found it difficult to persuade the average human to come in out of the rain. You just couldn't talk to some people.
   "Oook!" he said, and beckoned.
   "I can't leave the office," said Carrot. "I've had Orders."
   The Librarian's upper lip rolled back like a blind.
   "Is that a smile?" said Carrot. The Librarian shook his head.
   "Someone hasn't committed a crime, have they?" said Carrot.
   "Oook."
   "A bad crime?"
   "Oook!"
   "Like murder?"
   "Eeek."
   "Worse than murder?"
   "Eeek!" The Librarian knuckled over to the door and bounced up and down urgently.
   Carrot gulped. Orders were orders, yes, but this was something else. The people in this city were capable of anything.
   He buckled on his breastplate, screwed his sparkling helmet on to his head, and strode towards the door.
   Then he remembered his responsibilities. He went back to the desk, found a scrap of paper, and painstakingly wrote: Out Fighting Crime, Pleass Call Again Later. Thankyou.
   And then he went out on to the streets, untarnished and unafraid.
   ...
   The Supreme Grand Master raised his arms. "Brethren," he said, "let us begin ..." It was so easy. All you had to do was channel that great septic reservoir of jealousy and cringing resent­ment that the Brothers had in such abundance, harness their dreadful mundane unpleasantness which had a force greater in its way than roaring evil, and then open your own mind . . .
   . . . into the place where the dragons went.
   ...
   Vimes found himself grabbed by the arm and pulled inside. The heavy door shut behind him with a definite click.
   "It's Lord Mountjoy Gayscale Talonthrust III of Ankh," said the apparition, which was dressed in huge and fearsomely-padded armour. "You know, I really don't think he can cut the mustard."
   "He can't?" said Vimes, backing away.
   "It really needs two of you."
   "It does, doesn't it," whispered Vimes, his shoul­der blades trying to carve their way out through the fence.
   "Could you oblige?" boomed the thing.
   "What?"
   "Oh, don't be squeamish, man. You just have to help him up into the air. It's me who has the tricky part. I know it's cruel, but if he can't manage it tonight then he's for the choppy-chop. Survival of the fittest and all that, don't you know."
   Captain Vimes managed to get a grip on himself. He was clearly in the presence of some sex-crazed would-be murderess, insofar as any gender could be determined under the strange lumpy garments. If it wasn't female, then references to "it's me who has the tricky part" gave rise to mental images that would haunt him for some time to come. He knew the rich did things differently, but this was going too far.
   "Madam," he said coldly, "I am an officer of the Watch and I must warn you that the course of action you are suggesting breaks the laws of the city," and also of several of the more strait-laced gods, he added silently, "and I must advise you that his Lordship should be released unharmed immediately…"
   The figure stared at him in astonishment.
   "Why?" it said. "It's my bloody dragon."
   ...
   "Have another drink, not-Corporal Nobby?" said Sergeant Colon unsteadily.
   "I do not mind if I do, not-Sgt Colon," said Nobby.
   They were taking inconspicuosity seriously. That ruled out most of the taverns on the Morpork side of the river, where they were very well known. Now they were in a rather elegant one in downtown Ankh, where they were being as unobtrusive as they knew how. The other drinkers thought they were some kind of cabaret.
   "I was thinking," said Sgt Colon.
   "What?"
   "If we bought a bottle or two, we could go home and then we'd be really inconspicuous."
   Nobby gave this some thought.
   "But he said we’ve got to keep our ears open," he said. "We're supposed to, what he said, detect any­thing."
   "We can do that at my house," said Sgt Colon. "We could listen all night, really hard."
   "Tha's a good point," said Nobby. In fact, it sounded better and better the more he thought about it.
   "But first," he announced, "I got to pay a visit."
   "Me too," said the sergeant. "This detecting busi­ness gets to you after a while, doesn't it."
   They stumbled out into the alley behind the tavern. There was a full moon up, but a few rags of scruffy cloud were drifting across it. The pair inconspicuously bumped into one another in the darkness.
   "Is that you, Detector Sergeant Colon?" said Nobby.
   "Tha's right! Now, can you detect the door to the privy, Detector Corporal Nobbs? We're looking for a short, dark door of mean appearance, ahahaha."
   There were a couple of clanks and a muffled swear­word from Nobby as he staggered across the alley, followed by a yowl when one of Ankh-Morpork's enormous population of feral cats fled between his legs.
   "Who loves you, pussycat?" said Nobby under his breath.
   "Needs must, then," said Sgt Colon, and faced a handy corner.
   His private musings were interrupted by a grunt from the corporal.
   "You there, Sgt?"
   "Detector Sergeant to you, Nobby," said Sgt Colon pleasantly.
   Nobby's tone was urgent and suddenly very sober. "Don't piss about, Sergeant, I just saw a dragon fly over!"
   "I've seen a horsefly," said Sgt Colon, hiccuping gently. "And I've seen a housefly. I've even seen a greenfly. But I ain't never seen a dragon fly."
   "Of course you have, you pillock," said Nobby ur­gently. "Look, I'm not messing about! He had wings on him like, like, like great big wings!"
   Sergeant Colon turned majestically. The corporal's face had gone so white that it showed up in the dark­ness.
   "Honest, Sergeant!"
   Sgt Colon turned his eyes to the damp sky and the rain-washed moon.
   "All right," he said, "show me."
   There was a slithering noise behind him, and a cou­ple of roof tiles smashed on to the street.
   He turned. And there, on the roof, was the dragon.
   "There's a dragon on the roof!" he warbled. "Nobby, it's a dragon on the roof! What shall I do, Nobby? There's a dragon on the roof! It's looking right at me, Nobby!"
   "For a start, you could do your trousers up," said Nobby, from behind the nearest wall.
   ...
   Even shorn of her layers of protective clothing, Lady Sybil Ramkin was still toweringly big. Vimes knew that the barbarian hublander folk had legends about great chain-mailed, armour-bra'd, carthorse-riding maidens who swooped down on battlefields and car­ried off dead warriors on their cropper to a glorious roistering afterlife, while singing in a pleasing mezzo-soprano. Lady Ramkin could have been one of them. She could have led them. She could have carried off a battalion. When she spoke, every word was like a hearty slap on the back and clanged with the aristo­cratic self-assurance of the totally well-bred. The vowel sounds alone would have cut teak.
   Vimes's ragged forebears were used to voices like that, usually from heavily-armoured people on the back of a war charger telling them why it would be a jolly good idea, don't-cher-know, to charge the enemy and hit them for six. His legs wanted to stand to attention.
   Prehistoric men would have worshipped her, and in fact had amazingly managed to carve lifelike statues of her thousands of years ago. She had a mass of chest­nut hair; a wig, Vimes learned later. No one who had much to do with dragons kept their own hair for long.
   She also had a dragon on her shoulder. It had been introduced as Talonthrust Vincent Wonderkind of Quirm, referred to as Vinny, and seemed to be making a large contribution to the unusual chemical smell that pervaded the house. This smell permeated everything. Even the generous slice of cake she offered him tasted of it.
   "The, er, shoulder ... it looks . . . very nice," he said, desperate to make conversation.
   "Rubbish," said her ladyship. "I'm just training him up because shoulder-sitters fetch twice the price."
   Vimes murmured that he had occasionally seen so­ciety ladies with small, colourful dragons on their shoulders, and thought it looked very, er, nice.
   "Oh, it sounds nice," she said. "I'll grant you. Then they realize it means soot-burns, frizzled hair and crap all down their back. Those talons dig in, too. And then they think the thing's getting too big and smelly and next thing you know it's either down to the Morpork Sunshine Sanctuary for Lost Dragons or the old heave-ho into the river with a rope round your neck, poor little buggers." She sat down, arranging a skirt that could have made sails for a small fleet. "Now then. Captain Vimes, what was it?"
   Vimes was at a loss. Ramkins long-dead stared down at him from ornate frames high on the shadowy walls. Between, around and under the portraits were the weapons they'd presumably used, and had used well and often by the look of them. Suits of armour stood in dented ranks along the walls. Quite a number, he couldn't help noticing, had large holes in them. The ceiling was a faded riot of moth-eaten banners. You did not need forensic examination to understand that Lady Ramkin's ancestors had never shirked a fight.
   It was amazing that she was capable of doing some­thing so unwarlike as having a cup of tea.
   "My forebears," she said, following his hypnotised gaze. "You know, not one Ramkin in the last thousand years has died in his bed."
   "Yes, ma'am?"
   "Source of family pride, that."
   "Yes, ma'am."
   "Quite a few of them have died in other people's, of course."
   Captain Vimes's teacup rattled in its saucer. "Yes, ma'am," he said.
   "Captain is such a dashing title, I've always thought." She gave him a bright, brittle smile. "I mean, colonels and so on are always so stuffy, majors are pompous, but one always feels somehow that there is something delightfully dangerous about a captain. What was it you had to show me?"
   Vimes gripped his parcel like a chastity belt.
   "I wondered," he faltered, "how big swamp . . . er . . ." He stopped. Something dreadful was happen­ing to his lower regions.
   Lady Ramkin followed his gaze. "Oh, take no no­tice of bun," she said cheerfully. "Hit him with a cushion if he's a bother."
   A small elderly dragon had crawled out from under his chair and placed its jowly muzzle in Vimes's lap. It stared up at him soulfully with big brown eyes and gently dribbled something quite corrosive, by the feel of it, over his knees. And it stank like the ring around an acid bath.
   "That's Dewdrop Mabelline Talonthrust the First," said her ladyship. "Champion and sire of champions. No fire left now, poor soppy old thing. He likes his belly rubbed."
   Vimes made surreptitiously vicious jerking motions to dislodge the old dragon. It blinked mournfully at him with rheumy eyes and rolled back the corner of its mouth, exposing a picket fence of soot-blackened teeth.
   "Just push him off if he's a nuisance," said Lady Ramkin cheerfully. "Now then, what was it you were asking?"
   ' 'I was wondering how big swamp dragons grow?'' said Vimes, trying to shift position. There was a faint growling noise.
   "You came all the way up here to ask me that? Well ... I seem to recall Gayheart Talonthrust of Ankh stood fourteen thumbs high, toe to mattock," mused Lady Ramkin.
   "Er . . ."
   "About three foot six inches," she added kindly.
   "No bigger than that?" said Vimes hopefully. In his lap the old dragon began to snore gently.
   "Golly, no. He was a bit of a freak, actually. Mostly they don't get much bigger than eight thumbs."
   Captain Vimes's lips moved in hurried calculation. "Two feet?" he ventured.
   "Well done. That's the cobbs, of course. The hens are a bit smaller."
   Captain Vimes wasn't going to give in. "A cobb would be a male dragon?" he said.
   "Only after the age of two years," said Lady Ramkin triumphantly. "Up to the age of eight months he's a pewmet, then he's a cock until fourteen months, and then he's a snood-"
   Captain Vimes sat entranced, eating the horrible cake, britches gradually dissolving, as the stream of information flooded over him; how the males fought with flame but in the laying season only the hens breathed fire, from the combustion of complex intes­tinal gases, to incubate the eggs which needed such a fierce temperature, while the males gathered firewood; a group of swamp dragons was a slump or an embar­rassment; a female was capable of laying up to three clutches of four eggs every year, most of which were trodden on by absent-minded males; and that only until their third clutch, of course. After that they're dams.
   An that dragons of both sexes were vaguely uninterested in one an­other, and indeed everything except firewood, except for about once every two months when they became as single-minded as a buzzsaw.
   He was helpless to prevent himself being taken out to the kennels at the back, outfitted from neck to ankle in leather armour faced with steel plates, and ushered into the long low building where the whistling had come from.
   The temperature was terrible, but not as bad as the cocktail of smells. He staggered aimlessly from one metal-lined pen to another, while pear-shaped, squeaking little horrors with red eyes were introduced as "Moonpenny Duchess Marchpaine, who's gravid at the moment" and "Moonmist Talonthrust II, who was Best of Breed at Pseudopolis last year". Jets of pale green flame played across his knees.
   Many of the stalls had rosettes and certificates pinned over them.
   "And this one, I'm afraid, is Goodboy Bindle Featherstone of Quirm," said Lady Ramkin relent­lessly.
   Vimes stared groggily over the charred barrier at the small creature curled up in the middle of the floor. It bore about the same resemblance to the rest of them as Nobby did to the average human being. Something in its ancestry had given it a pair of eyebrows that were about the same size as its stubby wings, which could never have supported it in the air. Its head was the wrong shape, like an anteater. It had nostrils like jet intakes. If it ever managed to get airborne the things would have the drag of twin parachutes.
   It was also turning on Captain Vimes the most si­lently intelligent look he'd ever had from any animal, including Corporal Nobbs.
   "It happens," said Lady Ramkin sadly. "It's all down to genes, you know."
   "It is?" said Vimes. Somehow, the creature seemed to be concentrating all the power its siblings wasted in flame and noise into a stare like a thermic lance. He couldn't help remembering how much he'd wanted a puppy when he was a little boy. Mind you, they'd been starving - anything with meat on it would have done.
   He heard the dragon lady say, "One tries to breed for a good flame, depth of scale, correct colour and so on. One just has to put up with the occasional total whittle."
   The little dragon turned on Vimes a gaze that would be guaranteed to win it the award for Dragon the Judges would Most Like to Take Home and Use as A Portable Gas Lighter.
   Total whittle, Vimes thought. He wasn't sure of the precise meaning of the word, but he could hazard a shrewd guess. It sounded like whatever it was you had left when you had extracted everything of any value whatsoever. Like the Watch, he thought. Total whit­tles, every one of them. And just like him. It was the saga of his life.
   "That's Nature for you," said her ladyship. "Of course I wouldn't dream of breeding from him, but he wouldn't be able to anyway.''
   "Why not?" said Vimes.
   "Because dragons have to mate in the air and he'll never be able to fly with those wings, I'm afraid. I'll be sorry to lose the bloodline, naturally. His sire was Brenda Rodley's Treebite Brightscale. Do you know Brenda?"
   "Er, no," said Vimes. Lady Ramkin was one of those people who assumed that everyone else knew everyone one knew.
   "Charming gel. Anyway, his brothers and sisters are shaping up very well."
   Poor little bastard, thought Vimes. That's Nature for you in a nutshell. Always dealing off the bottom of the pack.
   No wonder they call her a mother . . .
   "You said you had something to show me," Lady Ramkin prompted.
   Vimes wordlessly handed her the parcel. She slipped off her heavy mittens and unwrapped it.
   "Plaster cast of a footprint," she said, baldly. "Well?"
   "Does it remind you of anything?" said Vimes.
   "Could be a wading bird."
   "Oh." Vimes was crestfallen.
   Lady Ramkin laughed. "Or a really big dragon. Got it out of a museum, did you?"
   "No. I got it off the street this morning."
   "Ha? Someone's been playing tricks on you, old chap."
   "Er. There was, er, circumstantial evidence."
   He told her. She stared at him.
   "Draco nobilis," she said hoarsely.
   "Pardon?" said Vimes.
   "Draco nobilis. The Noble dragon. As opposed to these fellows…" she waved a hand in the direction of the massed ranks of whistling lizards…"Draco vul-garis, the lot of them. But the big ones are all gone, you know. This really is a nonsense. No two ways about it. All gone. Beautiful things, they were. Weighed tons. Biggest things ever to fly. No one knows how they did it."
   And then they realized.
   It was suddenly very quiet.
   All along the rows of kennels, the dragons were si­lent, bright-eyed and watchful. They were staring at the roof.
   ...
   Carrot looked around him. Shelves stretched away in every direction. On those shelves, books. He made a calculated guess.
   "This is the Library, isn't it?" he said.
   The Librarian maintained his gentle but firm grip on the boy's hand and led him along the maze of aisles.
   "Is there a body?" said Carrot. There'd have to be. Worse than murder! A body in a library. It could lead to anything.
   The ape eventually padded to a halt in front of a shelf no different than, it seemed, a hundred others. Some of the books were chained up. There was a gap. The Librarian pointed to it.
   "Oook."
   "Well, what about it? A hole where a book should be."
   "Oook."
   "A book has been taken. A book has been taken? You summoned the Watch," Carrot drew himself up proudly, "because someone's taken a book? You think that's worse than murder?"
   The Librarian gave him the kind of look other peo­ple would reserve for people who said things like "What's so bad about genocide?"
   "This is practically a criminal offence, wasting Watch time," said Carrot. "Why don't you just tell the head wizards, or whoever they are?"
   "Oook." The Librarian indicated with some sur­prisingly economical gestures that most wizards would not find their own bottoms with both hands.
   "Well, I don't see what we can do about it," said Carrot. "What's the book called?"
   The Librarian scratched his head. This one was go­ing to be tricky. He faced Carrot, put his leather-glove hands together, then folded them open.
   "I know it's a book. What's its name?"
   The Librarian sighed, and held up a hand.
   "Four words?" said Carrot. "First word." The ape pinched two wrinkled fingers together. "Small word? A. The. Fo-"
   "Oook!"
   "The? The. Second word . . . third word? Small word. The? A? To? Of? Fro-Of? Of. The something Of something. Second word. What? Oh. First syllable. Fingers? Touching your fingers. Thumbs."
   The orangutan growled and tugged theatrically at one large hairy ear.
   "Oh, sounds like. Fingers? Hand? Adding up. Sums. Cut off. Smaller word . . . Sum. Sum! Second syllable. Small. Very small syllable. A. In. Un. On. On! Sum. On. Sum On. Summon! Summon-er? Summoning? Summoning. Summoning. The Sum­moning of Something. This is fun, isn't it! Fourth word. Whole word-"
   He peered intently as the Librarian gyrated myste­riously.
   "Big thing. Huge big thing. Flapping. Great big flapping leaping thing. Teeth. Huffing. Blowing. Great big huge blowing flapping thing." Sweat broke out on Carrot's forehead as he tried obediently to understand. "Sucking fingers. Sucking fingers thing. Burnt. Hot. Great big hot blowing flapping thing ..."
   The Librarian rolled his eyes. Homo sapiens? You could keep it.
 
   The great dragon danced and spun and trod the air over the city. Its colour was moonlight, gleaming off its scales. Sometimes it would twist and glide with deceptive speed over the rooftops for the sheer joy of existing.
   And it was all wrong, Vimes thought. Part of him was marvelling at the sheer beauty of the sight, but an insistent, weaselly little group of brain cells from the wrong side of the synapses was scrawling its graffiti on the walls of wonderment.
   It's a bloody great lizard, they jeered. Must weigh tons. Nothing that big can fly, not even on beautiful wings. And what is a flying lizard doing with great big scales on its back?
   Five hundred feet above him a lance of blue-white flame roared into the sky.
   It can't do something like that! It'd burn its own lips off!
   Beside him Lady Ramkin stood with her mouth open. Behind her, the little caged dragons yammered and howled.
   The great beast turned in the air and swooped over the rooftops. The flame darted out again. Below it, yellow flames sprang up. It was done so quietly and stylishly that it took Vimes several seconds to realise that several buildings had in fact been set on fire.
   "Golly!" said Lady Ramkin. "Look! It's using the thermals! That's what the fire is for!" She turned to Vimes, her eyes hopelessly aglow. "Do you realise we're very probably seeing something that no one has seen for centuries?''
   "Yes, it's a bloody flying alligator setting fire to my city!" shouted Vimes.
   She wasn't listening to him. "There must be a breeding colony somewhere," she said. "After all this time! Where do you think it lives?"
   Vimes didn't know. But he swore to himself that he would find out, and ask it some very serious questions.
   "One egg," breathed the breeder. "Just let me get my hands on one egg ..."
   Vimes stared at her in genuine astonishment. It dawned on him that he was very probably a flawed character.
   Below them, another building exploded into flame.
   "How far exactly," he said, speaking very slowly and carefully, as to a child, "did these things fly?"
   "They're very territorial animals," murmured her ladyship. "According to legend, they…"
   Vimes realized he was in for another dose of dragon lore. "Just give me the facts, m'lady," he said impa­tiently.
   "Not very far, really," she said, slightly taken aback.
   "Thank you very much, ma'am, you've been very helpful," muttered Vimes, and broke into a run.
   Somewhere in the city. There was nothing outside for miles except low fields and swamp. It had to be living somewhere in the city.
   His sandals flapped on the cobbles as he hurtled down the streets. Somewhere in the city! Which was totally ridiculous, of course. Totally ridiculous and impossible.
   He didn't deserve this. Of all the cities in all the world it could have flown into, he thought, it's flown into mine . . .
   ...
   By the time he reached the river the dragon had van­ished. But a pall of smoke was hanging over the streets and several human bucket chains had been formed to pass lumps of the river to the stricken buildings.[13] The job was considerably hampered by the droves of peo­ple streaming out of the streets, carrying their posses­sions. Most of the city was wood and thatch, and they weren't taking any chances.
   In fact the danger was surprisingly small. Mysteri­ously small, when you came to think about it.
   Vimes had surreptitiously taken to carrying a note­book these days, and he had noted the damage as if the mere act of writing it down somehow made the world a more understandable place.
   Itym: Ae Coache House (belonging to an inoffensive businessman, who'd seen his new carriage go up in flames).
   Itym: Ae smalle vegettable shoppe (with pin-point accuracy).
   Vimes wondered about that. He'd bought some ap­ples in there once, and there didn't appear to be any­thing about it that a dragon could possibly take offence at.
   Still, very considerate of the dragon, he thought as he made his way to the Watch House. When you think of all the timber yards, hayricks, thatched roofs and oil stores it could have hit by chance, it's managed to really frighten everyone without actually harming the city.
   Rays of early morning sunlight were piercing the drifts of smoke as he pushed open the door. This was home. Not the bare little room over the candlemaker's shop in Wixon's Alley, where he slept, but this nasty brown room that smelt of unswept chimneys, Sgt Co­lon's pipe, Nobby's mysterious personal problem and, latterly, Carrot's armour polish. It was almost like home.
   No one else was there. He wasn't entirely surprised. He clumped up to his office and leaned back in his chair, whose cushion would have been thrown out of its basket in disgust by an incontinent dog, pulled his helmet over his eyes, and tried to think.
   No good rushing about. The dragon had vanished in all the smoke and confusion, as suddenly as it had come. Time for rushing about soon enough. The im­portant thing was working out where to rush to ...
   He'd been right. Wading bird! But where did you start looking for a bloody great dragon in a city of a million people?
   He was aware that his right hand, entirely unbidden, had pulled open the bottom drawer, and three of his fingers, acting on sealed orders from his hindbrain, had lifted out a bottle. It was one of those bottles that emptied themselves. Reason told him that sometimes he must occasionally start one, break the seal, see am­ber liquid glistening all the way up to the neck. It was just that he couldn't remember the sensation. It was as if the bottles arrived two-thirds empty . . .
   He stared at the label. It seemed to be Jimkin Bear-hugger's Old Selected Dragon's Blood Whiskey. Cheap and powerful, you could light fires with it, you could clean spoons. You didn't have to drink much of it to be drunk, which was just as well.
   It was Nobby who shook him awake with the news that there was a dragon in the city, and also that Sgt Colon had had a nasty turn. Vinies sat and blinked owlishly while the words washed around him. Appar­ently having a fire-breathing lizard focusing interest­edly on one's nether regions from a distance of a few feet can upset the strongest constitution. An experi­ence like that could leave a lasting mark on a person.
   Vimes was still digesting this when Carrot turned up with the Librarian swinging along behind him.
   "Did you see it? Did you see it?" he said.
   "We all saw it," said Vimes.
   "I know all about it!" said Carrot triumphantly. "Someone's brought it here with magic. Someone's stolen a book out of the Library and guess what it's called?"
   "Can't even begin to," said Vimes weakly.
   "It's called The Summoning of Dragons!"
   "Oook," confirmed the Librarian.
   "Oh? What's it about?" said Vimes. The Librarian rolled his eyes.
   "It's about how to summon dragons. By magic!"
   "Oook."
   "And that's illegal, that is!" said Carrot happily. "Releasing Feral Creatures upon the Streets, contrary to the Wild Animals (Public…"
   Vimes groaned. That meant wizards. You got noth­ing but trouble with wizards.
   "I suppose," he said, "there wouldn't be another copy of this book around, would there?"
   "Oook." The Librarian shook his head.
   "And you wouldn't happen to know what's in it?" Vimes sighed.
   "What? Oh. Four words," he said wearily. "First word. Sounds like. Bend. Bough? Sow, cow, how . . . How. Second word. Small word. The, a, to . . . To. Yes, understood, but I meant in any kind of detail? No. I see."
   "What're we going to do now, sir?" said Carrot anxiously.
   "It's out there," intoned Nobby. "Gone to ground, like, during the hours of daylight. Coiled up in its secret lair, on top of a great hoard of gold, dreamin' ancient reptilian dreams fromma dawna time, waitin' for the secret curtains of the night, when once more it will sally forth…" He hesitated and added sullenly, "What're you all looking at me like that for?"
   "Very poetic," said Carrot.
   "Well, everyone knows the real old dragons used to go to sleep on a hoard of gold,'' said Nobby. ' 'Well known folk myth."
   Vimes looked blankly into the immediate future. Vile though Nobby was, he was also a good indication of what was going through the mind of the average citizen. You could use him as a sort of laboratory rat to forecast what was going to happen next.
   "I expect you'd be really interested in finding out where that hoard is, wouldn't you?" said Vimes ex­perimentally.
   Nobby looked even more shifty than usual. "Well, Cap'n, I was thinking of having a bit of a look around. You know. When I'm off duty, of course," he added virtuously.
   "Oh, dear," said Captain Vimes.
   He lifted up the empty bottle and, with great care, put it back in the drawer.
   ...