Pyramids (Discworld 7)

'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.