Look after the dead, said the priests, and the dead would look after you. After all, they were in the majority.
Teppic pushed aside the reeds. He straightened his clothing, brushed some mud off his sleeve and set off for the palace.
Ahead of him, dark against the flarelight, stood the great statue of Khuft. Seven thousand years ago Khuft had led his people out of—Teppic couldn’t remember, but somewhere where they hadn’t liked being, probably, and for thoroughly good reasons; it was at times like this he wished he knew more history—and had prayed in the desert and the gods of the place had shown him the Old Kingdom. And he had entered, yea, and taken possession thereof, that it should ever be the dwelling place of his seed. Something like that, anyway. There were probably more yeas and a few verilys, with added milk and honey. But the sight of that great patriarchal face, that outstretched arm, that chin you could crack stones on, bold in the flarelight, told him what he already knew.
He was home, and he was never going to leave again.
The sun began to rise.
The greatest mathematician alive on the Disc, and in fact the last one in the Old Kingdom, stretched out in his stall and counted the pieces of straw in his bedding. Then he estimated the number of nails in the wall. Then he spent a few minutes proving that an automorphic resonance field has a semi-infinite number of irresolute prime ideals. After that, in order to pass the time, he ate his breakfast again.
Two weeks went past. Ritual and ceremony in their due times kept the world under the sky and the stars in their courses. It was astonishing what ritual and ceremony could do.
The new king examined himself in the mirror, and frowned.
“What’s it made of?” he said. “It’s rather foggy.”
“Bronze, sire. Polished bronze,” said Dios, handing him the Flail of Mercy.
“In Ankh-Morpork we had glass mirrors with silver on the back. They were very good.”
“Yes, sire. Here we have bronze, sire.”
“Do I really have to wear this gold mask?”
“The Face of the Sun, sire. Handed down through all the ages. Yes, sire. On all public occasions, sire.”
Teppic peered out through the eye slots. It was certainly a handsome face. It smiled faintly. He remembered his father visiting the nursery one day and forgetting to take it off; Teppic had screamed the place down.
“It’s rather heavy.”
“It is weighted with the centuries,” said Dios, and passed over the obsidian Reaping Hook of Justice.
“Have you been a priest long, Dios?”
“Many years, sire, man and eunuch. Now—”
“Father said you were high priest even in grandad’s time. You must be very old.”
“Well-preserved, sire. The gods have been kind to me,” said Dios, in the face of the evidence. “And now, sire, if we could just hold this as well…”
“What is it?”
“The Honeycomb of Increase, sire. Very important.”
Teppic juggled it into position.
“I expect you’ve seen a lot of changes,” he said politely.
A look of pain passed over the old priest’s face, but quickly, as if it was in a hurry to get away. “No, sire,” he said smoothly, “I have been very fortunate.”
“Oh. What’s this?”
“The Sheaf of Plenty, sire. Extremely significant, very symbolic.”
“If you could just tuck it under my arm, then…Have you ever heard of plumbing, Dios?”
The priest snapped his fingers at one of the attendants. “No, sire,” he said, and leaned forward. “This is the Asp of Wisdom. I’ll just tuck it in here, shall I?”
“It’s like buckets, but not as, um, smelly.”
“Sounds dreadful, sire. The smell keeps bad influences away, I have always understood. This, sire, is the Gourd of the Waters of the Heavens. If we could just raise our chin…”
“This is all necessary, is it?” said Teppic indistinctly.
“It is traditional, sire. If we could just rearrange things a little, sire…here is the Three-Pronged Spear of the Waters of the Earth; I think we will be able to get
this
finger around it. We shall have to see about our marriage, sire.”
“I’m not sure we would be compatible, Dios.”
The high priest smiled with his mouth. “Sire is pleased to jest, sire,” he said urbanely. “However, it is essential that you marry.”
“I am afraid all the girls I know are in Ankh-Morpork,” said Teppic airily, knowing in his heart that this broad statement referred to Mrs. Collar, who had been his bedder in the sixth form, and one of the serving wenches who’d taken a shine to him and always gave him extra gravy. (But…and his blood pounded at the memory…there had been the annual Assassins’ Ball and, because the young assassins were trained to move freely in society and were expected to dance well, and because well-cut black silk and long legs attracted a certain type of older woman, they’d whirled the night away through baubons, galliards and slow-stepping pavonines, until the air thickened with musk and hunger. Chidder, whose simple open face and easygoing manner were a winner every time, came back to bed very late for days afterward and tended to fall asleep during lessons…)
“Quite unsuitable, sire. We would require a consort well-versed in the observances. Of course, our aunt is available, sire.”
There was a clatter. Dios sighed, and motioned the attendants to pick things up.
“If we could just begin again, sire? This is the Cabbage of Vegetative Increase—”
“Sorry,” said Teppic, “I didn’t hear you say I should marry my aunt, did I?”
“You did, sire. Interfamilial marriage is a proud tradition of our lineage,” said Dios.
“But my aunt is my
aunt
”
Dios rolled his eyes. He’d advised the late king repeatedly about the education of his son, but the man was stubborn, stubborn. Now he’d have to do it on the fly. The gods were testing him, he decided. It took decades to make a monarch, and he had weeks to do it in.
“Yes, sire,” he said patiently. “Of course. And she is also your uncle, your cousin and your father.”
“Hold on. My father—”
The priest raised his hand soothingly. “A technicality,” he said. “Your great-great-grandmother once declared she is king as a matter of political expediency and I don’t believe the edict is ever rescinded.”
“But she
was
a woman, though?”
Dios looked shocked. “Oh no, sire. She is a man. She herself declared this.”
“But look, a chap’s aunt—”
“Quite so, sire. I quite understand.”
“Well, thank you,” said Teppic.
“It is a great shame that we have no sisters.”
“Sisters!”
“It does not do to water the divine blood, sire. The sun might not like it. Now
this
, sire, is the Scapula of Hygiene. Where would you like it put?”
King Teppicymon XXVII was watching himself being stuffed. It was just as well he didn’t feel hunger these days. Certainly he would never want to eat chicken again.
“Very nice stitching there, master.”
“Just keep your finger still, Gern.”
“My mother does stitching like that. She’s got a pinny with stitching like that, has our mum,” said Gern conversationally.
“Keep it still, I said.”
“It’s got all ducks and hens on it,” Gern supplied helpfully.
Dil concentrated on the job in hand. It was good workmanship, he was prepared to admit. The Guild of Embalmers and Allied Trades had awarded him medals for it.
“It must make you feel really proud,” said Gern.
“What?”
“Well, our mam says the king goes on living, sort of thing, after all this stuffing and stitching. Sort of in the Netherworld. With your stitching in him.”
And several sacks of straw and a couple of buckets of pitch, thought the shade of the king sadly. And the wrapping off Gern’s lunch, although he didn’t blame the lad, who’d just forgotten where he’d put it. All eternity with someone’s lunch wrapping as part of your vital organs. There had been half a sausage left, too.
He’d become quite attached to Dil, and even to Gern. He seemed still to be attached to his body, too—at least, he felt uncomfortable if he wandered more than a few hundred yards away from it—and so in the course of the last couple of days he’d learned quite a lot about them.
Funny, really. He’d spent the whole of his life in the kingdom talking to a few priests and so forth. He knew objectively there had been other people around—servants and gardeners and so forth—but they figured in his life as blobs. He was at the top, and then his family, and then the priests and the nobles of course, and then there were the blobs. Damn fine blobs, of course, some of the finest blobs in the world, as loyal a collection of blobs as a king might hope to rule. But blobs, none the less.
But now he was absolutely engrossed in the daily details of Dil’s shy hopes for advancement within the Guild, and the unfolding story of Gern’s clumsy overtures to Glwenda, the garlic farmer’s daughter who lived nearby. He listened in fascinated astonishment to the elaboration of a world as full of subtle distinctions of grade and station as the one he had so recently left; it was terrible to think that he might never know if Gern overcame her father’s objections and won his intended, or if Dil’s work on this job—on
him
—would allow him to aspire to the rank of Exalted Grand Ninety-Degree Variance of the Natron Lodge of the Guild of Embalmers and Allied Trades.
It was as if death was some astonishing optical device which turned even a drop of water into a complex hive of life.
He found an overpowering urge to counsel Dil on elementary politics, or apprise Gern of the benefits of washing and looking respectable. He tried it several times. They could sense him, there was no doubt about that. But they just put it down to drafts.
Now he watched Dil pad over to the big table of bandages, and come back with a thick swatch which he held reflectively against what even the king was now prepared to think of as his corpse.
“I think the linen,” he said at last. “It’s definitely his color.”
Gern put his head on one side.
“He’d look good in the hessian,” he said. “Or maybe the calico.”
“Not the calico. Definitely not the calico. On him it’s too big.”
“He could molder into it. With wear, you know.”
Dil snorted. “Wear? Wear? You shouldn’t talk to me about calico and wear. What happens if someone robs the tomb in a thousand years’ time and him in calico, I’d like to know. He’d lurch halfway down the corridor, maybe throttle one of them, I’ll grant you, but then he’s coming undone, right? The elbows’ll be out in no time, I’ll never live it down.”
“But you’ll be dead, master!”
“Dead? What’s that got to do with it?” Dil riffled through the samples. “No, it’ll be the hessian. Got plenty of give in it, hessian. Good traction, too. He’ll really be able to lurch up speed in the passages, if he ever needs to.”
The king sighed. He’d have preferred something lightweight in taffeta.
“And go and shut the door,” Dil added. “It’s getting breezy in here.”
“And now it’s time,” said the high priest, “for us to see our late father.” He allowed himself a quiet smile. “I am sure he is looking forward to it,” he added.
Teppic considered this. It wasn’t something
he
was looking forward to, but at least it would get everyone’s mind off him marrying relatives. He reached down in what he hoped was a kingly fashion to stroke one of the palace cats. This also was not a good move. The creature sniffed it, went cross-eyed with the effort of thought, and then bit his fingers.
“Cats are sacred,” said Dios, shocked at the words Teppic uttered.
“Long-legged cats with silver fur and disdainful expressions are, maybe,” said Teppic, nursing his hand, “I don’t know about this sort. I’m sure sacred cats don’t leave dead ibises under the bed. And I’m certain that sacred cats that live surrounded by endless sand don’t come indoors and do it in the king’s sandals, Dios.”
“All cats are cats,” said Dios, vaguely, and added, “If we would be so gracious as to follow us.” He motioned Teppic toward a distant arch.
Teppic followed slowly. He’d been back home for what seemed like ages, and it still didn’t feel right. The air was too dry. The clothes felt wrong. It was too hot. Even the buildings seemed wrong. The pillars, for one thing. Back ho—back at the Guild, pillars were graceful fluted things with little bunches of stone grapes and things around the top. Here they were massive pear-shaped lumps, where all the stone had run to the bottom.
Half a dozen servants trailed behind him, carrying the various items of regalia.
He tried to imitate Dios’s walk, and found the movements coming back to him. You turned your torso
this
way, then you turned your head
this
way, and extended your arms at forty-five degrees to your body with the palms down, and then you attempted to move.
The high priest’s staff raised echoes as it touched the flagstones. A blind man could have walked barefoot through the palace by tracing the time-worn dimples it had created over the years.
“I am afraid that we will find that our father has changed somewhat since we last saw him,” said Dios conversationally, as they undulated by the fresco of Queen Khaphut accepting Tribute from the Kingdoms of the World.
“Well, yes,” said Teppic, bewildered by the tone. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“There’s that, too,” said Dios, and Teppic realized that he hadn’t been referring to something as trivial as the king’s current physical condition.
He was lost in a horrified admiration. It wasn’t that Dios was particularly cruel or uncaring, it was simply that death was a mere irritating transition in the eternal business of existence. The fact that people died was just an inconvenience, like them being out when you called.
It’s a strange world, he thought. It’s all busy shadows, and it never changes. And I’m part of it.
“Who’s he?” he said, pointing to a particularly big fresco showing a tall man with a hat like a chimney and a beard like a rope riding a chariot over a lot of other, much smaller, people.
“His name
is
in the cartouche below,” said Dios primly.
“What?”
“The small oval, sire,” said Dios.
Teppic peered closely at the dense hieroglyphics.
“‘Thin eagle, eye, wiggly line, man with a stick, bird sitting down, wiggly line,’” he read. Dios winced.
“I believe we must apply ourselves more to the study of modern languages,” he said, recovering a bit. “His name is Pta-ka-ba. He is king when the Djel Empire extends from the Circle Sea to the Rim Ocean, when almost half the continent pays tribute to us.”
Teppic realized what it was about the man’s speech that was strange. Dios would bend any sentence to breaking point if it meant avoiding a past tense. He pointed to another fresco.
“And her?” he said.
“She is Queen Khat-leon-ra-pta,” said Dios. “She wins the kingdom of Howonderland by stealth. This is the time of the Second Empire.”
“But she is dead?” said Teppic.
“I understand so,” said the high priest, after the slightest of pauses. Yes. The past tense definitely bothered Dios.
“I have learned seven languages,” said Teppic, secure in the knowledge that the actual marks he had achieved in three of them would remain concealed in the ledgers of the Guild.
“Indeed, sire?”
“Oh, yes. Morporkian, Vanglemesht, Ephebe, Laotation and—several others…” said Teppic.
“Ah.” Dios nodded, smiled, and continued to proceed down the corridor, limping slightly but still measuring his pace like the ticking of centuries. “The barbarian lands.”