Pyramids (Discworld 7)

Then Gern whimpered, very quietly.

Rising up the sky, very slowly, was a great flaming ball. And it was being pushed by a dung beetle bigger than worlds.

BOOK III

The Book of the New Son

The sun rose and, because this wasn't the Old Kingdom out here, it was a mere ball of flaming gas. The purple night of the high desert evaporated under its blowlamp glare. Lizards scuffled into cracks in the rocks. You Bastard settled himself down in the sparse shadow of what was left of the syphacia bushes, peered haughtily at the landscape, and began to chew cud and calculate square roots in base seven.

Teppic and Ptraci eventually found the shade of a limestone overhang, and sat glumly staring out at the waves of heat wobbling off the rocks.

'I don't understand,' said Ptraci. 'Have you looked everywhere?'

'It's a country! It can't just bloody well fall through a hole in the ground!'

'Where is it, then?' said Ptraci evenly.

Teppic growled. The heat struck like a hammer, but he strode out over the rocks as though three hundred square miles could perhaps have been hiding under a pebble or behind a bush.

The fact was that the track dipped between the cliffs, but almost immediately rose again and continued across the dunes into what was quite clearly Tsort. He'd recognised a wind-eroded sphinx that had been set up as a boundary marker; legend said it prowled the borders in times of dire national need, although legend wasn't sure why.

He knew they had galloped into Ephebe. He should be looking across the fertile, pyramid-speckled valley of the Djel that lay between the two countries.

He'd spent an hour looking for it.

It was inexplicable. It was uncanny. It was also extremely embarrassing.

He shaded his eyes and stared around for the thousandth time at the silent, baking landscape. And moved his head. And saw Djelibeybi.

It flashed across his vision in an instant. He jerked his eyes back and saw it again, a brief flash of misty colour that vanished as soon as he concentrated on it.

Some minutes later Ptraci peered out of the shade and saw him get down on his hands and knees. When he started turning over rocks she decided it was time he should come back in out of the sun.

He shook her hand off his shoulder, and gestured impatiently. 'I've found it!' He pulled a knife from his boot and started poking at the stones.

'Where?'

'Here!'

She laid a ringed hand on his forehead.

'Oh yes,' she said. 'I see. Yes. Good. Now I think you'd better come into the shade.'

'No, I mean it! Here! Look!'

She hunkered down and stared at the rock, to humour him.

'There's a crack,' she said, doubtfully.

'Look at it, will you? You have to turn your head and sort of look out of the corner of your eye.' Teppic's dagger smacked into the crack, which was no more than a faint line on the rock.

'Well, it goes on a long way,' said Ptraci, staring along the burning pavement.

'All the way from the Second Cataract to the Delta,' said Teppic. 'Covering your eye with one hand helps. Please give it a try. Please!'

She put one hesitant hand over her eye and squinted obediently at the rock.

Eventually she said. 'It's no good, I can't - seeee-' She stayed motionless for a moment and then flung herself sideways on to the rocks. Teppic stopped trying to hammer the knife into the crack and crawled over to her.