'Come on!' said IIb. 'It can't flare off, it's trying to find ways of discharging-'
There was a sound as loud as the groaning of continents.
Teppic felt it. He felt that his skin was several sizes too small. He felt that someone was holding his ears and trying to twist his head off.
He saw the guard captain sag to his knees, fighting to get his helmet off, and he leapt the stall.
Tried to leap the stall. Everything was wrong, and he landed heavily on a floor that seemed undecided about becoming a wall. He managed to get to his feet and was pulled sideways, dancing awkwardly across the stable to keep his balance.
The stables stretched and shrank like a picture in a distorting mirror. He'd gone to see some once in Ankh, the three of them hazarding a half-coin each to visit the transient marvels of Dr Mooner's Travelling Take Your Breath Away Emporium. But you knew then that it was only twisted glass that was giving you a head like a sausage and legs like footballs. Teppic wished he could be so certain that what was happening around him would allow of such a harmless explanation. You'd probably need a wobbly glass mirror to make it look normal.
He ran on taffy legs towards Ptraci and the high priest as the world was expanded and squeezed around him, and was momentarily gratified to see the girl squirm in Dios's grip and fetch him a tidy thump on the ear.
He moved as though in a dream, with the distances changing as though reality was an elastic thing. Another step sent him cannoning into the pair of them. He grabbed Ptraci's arm and staggered back to the camel stall, where the creature was still cudding and watching the scene with the nearest thing a camel will ever get to mild interest, and snatched its halter.
No-one seemed to be interested in stopping them as they helped each other through the doorway and out into the mad night.
'It helps if you shut your eyes,' said Ptraci.
Teppic tried it. It worked. A stretch of courtyard that his eyes told him was a quivering rectangle whose sides twanged like bowstrings became, well, just a courtyard under his feet.
'Gosh, that was clever,' he said. 'How did you think of that?'
'I always shut my eyes when I'm frightened,' said Ptraci.
'Good plan.'
'What's happening?'
'I don't know. I don't want to find out. I think going away from here could be an amazingly sensible idea. How do you make a camel kneel, did you say? I've got any amount of sharp things.'
The camel, who had a very adequate grasp of human language as it applied to threats, knelt down graciously. They scrambled aboard and the landscape lurched again as the beast jacked itself back on to its feet.
The camel knew perfectly well what was happening. Three stomachs and a digestive system like an industrial distillation plant gave you a lot of time for sitting and thinking.
, you mean the fabric of time and space being put through the wringer?' said IIa.
The architect gave his brother a look of faint admiration. It was an unusual remark for an accountant. Then his face returned to its previous look of faint terror.
'No, not that,' he said.
'Well, the sound of the very air itself being subjected to horrible tortures?'
'Not that, either,' said IIb, vaguely annoyed. 'I mean the creaking noise.'
Three more pyramids struck their discharges, which fizzled through the roiling clouds overhead and poured into the black marble above them.
'Can't hear anything like that,' said IIa.
'I think it's coming from the pyramid.'
'Well, you can put your ear against it if you like, but I'm not going to.'
The scaffolding swayed in the storm as they eased their way up another ladder, the heavy capstone rocking between them.
'I said we shouldn't do it,' muttered the accountant, as the stone slid gently on to his toes. 'We shouldn't have built this.'
'Just shut up and lift your end, will you?'