Pyramids (Discworld 7)

'Very well, then,' he said. 'I have one final request.'

'Yes?' Koomi's voice had timbre now, it was already a high priest's voice.

'I wish to be interred in the-' Dios began, and was cut off by a murmur from those priests who could look out across the river. All eyes turned to the distant, inky shore.

The legions of the kings of Djelibeybi were on the march. They lurched, but they covered the ground quickly. There were platoons, battalions of them. They didn't need Gern's hammer any more.

'It's the pickle,' said the king, as they watched half-a-dozen ancestors mummyhandle a seal out of its socket. 'It toughens you up.'

Some of the more ancient were getting over enthusiastic and attacking the pyramids themselves, actually managing to shift blocks higher than they were. The king didn't blame them. How terrible to be dead, and know you were dead, and locked away in the darkness.

They're never going to get me in one of those things, he vowed.

At last they came, like a tide, to yet another pyramid. - It was small, low, dark, half-concealed in drifted sands, and the blocks were hardly even masonry; they were no more than roughly squared boulders. It had clearly been built long before the Kingdom got the hang of pyramids. It was barely more than a pile.

Hacked into the doorseal, angular and deep, were the hieroglyphs of the Kingdom: KHUFT HAD ME MADE. THE FIRST.

Several ancestors clustered around it.

'Oh dear,' said the king. 'This might be going too far.'

'The First,' whispered Dil. 'The First into the Kingdom: No-one here before but hippos and crocodiles. From inside that pyramid seventy centuries look out at us. Older than anything-'

'Yes, yes, all right,' said Teppicymon. 'No need to get carried away. He was a man, just like all of us.'

'“AndKhuftthecamelherderlookeduponthevalley. . .”' Dil began.

'After seven thousand yeares, he wyll be wantyng to look upon yt again,' said Ashk-ur-men-tep bluntly.

'Even so,' said the king. 'It does seem a bit . .

'The dead are equal,' said Ashk-ur-men-tep. 'You, younge manne. Calle hym forth.'

'Who, me?' said Gern. 'But he was the Fir-'

'Yes, we've been through all that,' said Teppicymon. 'Do it. Everyone's getting impatient. So is he, I expect.'

Gern rolled his eyes, and hefted the hammer. Just as it was about to hiss down on the seal Dil darted forward, causing Gern to dance wildly across the ground in a groin-straining effort to avoid interring the hammer in his master's head.

'It's open!' said Dil. 'Look! The seal just swings aside!'

'Youe meane he iss oute?'

Teppicymon tottered forward and grabbed the door of the pyramid. It moved quite easily. Then he examined the stone beneath it. Derelict and half-covered though it was, someone had taken care to keep a pathway clear to the pyramid. And the stone was quite worn away, as by the passage of many feet.

This was not, by the nature of things, the normal state of affairs for a pyramid. The whole point was that once you were in, you were in.

The mummies examined the worn entrance and creaked at one another in surprise. One of the very ancient ones, who was barely holding himself together, made a noise like deathwatch beetle finally conquering a rotten tree.

'What'd he say?' said Teppicymon.

The mummy of Ashk-ur-men-tep translated. 'He saide yt ys Spooky,' he croaked.

The late king nodded. 'I'm going in to have a look. You two live ones, you come with me.'

Dil's face fell.

'Oh, come on, man,' snapped Teppicymon, forcing the door back. 'Look, I'm not frightened. Show a bit of backbone. Everyone else is.'