Pyramids (Discworld 7)

'The king is dead,' he said.

Koomi swayed under the sheer pressure of anger, but rallied magnificently.

'Then his successor-' he began.

'There is no successor,' said Dios. He stared up at the sky. Few people can look directly at the sun, but under the venom of Dios's gaze the sun itself might have flinched and looked away. Dios's eyes sighted down that fearsome nose like twin range finders.

To the air in general he said: 'Coming here as if they own the place. How dare they?'

Koomi's mouth dropped open. He started to protest, and a kilowatt stare silenced him.

Koomi sought support from the crowd of priests, who were busily inspecting their nails or staring intently into the middle distance. The message was clear. He was on his own. Although, if by some chance he won the battle of wills, he'd be surrounded by people assuring him that they had been behind him all along.

'Anyway, they do own the place,' he mumbled.

'What?'

'They, er, they do own the place, Dios,' Koomi repeated. His temper gave out. 'They're the sodding gods, Dios!'

'They're our gods,' Dios hissed. 'We're not their people. They're my gods and they will learn to do as they are instructed!'

Koomi gave up the frontal assault. You couldn't outstare that sapphire stare, you couldn't stand the war-axe nose and, most of all, no man could be expected to dent the surface of Dios's terrifying righteousness.

'But-' he managed.

Dios waved him into silence with a trembling hand.

'They've no right! ' he said. 'I did not give any orders! They have no right!'

'Then what are you going to do?' said Koomi.

Dios's hands opened and closed fitfully. He felt like a royalist might feel - a good royalist, a royalist who cut out pictures of all the Royals and stuck them in a scrapbook, a royalist who wouldn't hear a word said about them, they did such a good job and they can't answer back - if suddenly all the Royals turned up in his living room and started rearranging the furniture. He longed for the necropolis, and the cool silence among his old friends, and a quick sleep after which he'd be able to think so much more clearly . . .

Koomi's heart leapt. Dios's discomfort was a crack which, with due care and attention, could take a wedge. But you couldn't use a hammer. Head on, Dios could outfight the world.

The old man was shaking again. 'I do not presume to tell them how to run affairs in the Hereunder,' he said. 'They shall not presume to instruct me in how to run my kingdom.'

Koomi salted this treasonable statement away for further study and patted him gently on the back.

'You're right, of course,' he said. Dios's eyes swivelled.

'I am?' he said, suspiciously.

'I'm sure that, as the king's minister, you will find a way. You have our full support, O Dios.' Koomi waved an uplifted hand at the priests, who chorused wholehearted agreement. If you couldn't depend on kings and gods, you could always rely on old Dios. There wasn't one of them that wouldn't prefer the uncertain wrath of the gods to a rebuke from Dios. Dios terrified them in a very positive, human way that no supernatural entity ever could. Dios would sort it out.

'And we take no heed to these mad rumours about the king's disappearance. They are undoubtedly wild exaggerations, with no foundation,' said Koomi.

The priests nodded while, in each mind, a tiny rumour uncurled the length of its tail.

'What rumours?' said Dios out of the corner of his mouth.

'So enlighten us, master, as to the path we must now take,' said Koomi.

Dios wavered.

He did not know what to do. For him, this was a new experience. This was Change.

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