Pyramids (Discworld 7)

It was on the floor and it had a pillow at one end. It had to be a bed.

Teppic found he was doubting it as he tossed and turned, trying to find some part of the mattress that was prepared to meet him halfway. This is stupid, he thought, I grew up on beds like this. And pillows carved out of rock. I was born in this palace, this is my heritage, I must be prepared to accept it . . .

I must order a proper bed and a feather pillow from Ankh, first thing in the morning. I, the king, have said this shall be done.

He turned over, his head hitting the pillow with a thud.

And plumbing. What a great idea that was. It was amazing what you could do with a hole in the ground.

Yes, plumbing. And bloody doors. Teppic definitely wasn't used to having several attendants waiting on his will all the time, so performing his ablutions before bed had been extremely embarrassing. And the people, too. He was definitely going to get to know the people. It was wrong, all this skulking in palaces.

And how was a fellow supposed to sleep with the sky over the river glowing like a firework?

Eventually sheer exhaustion wrestled his body into some zone between sleeping and waking, and mad images stalked across his eyeballs.

There was the shame of his ancestors when future archaeologists translated the as-yet unpainted frescoes of his reign: '“Squiggle, constipated eagle, wiggly line, hippo's bottom, squiggle”: And in the year of the Cycle of Cephnet the Sun God Teppic had Plumbing Installed and Scorned the Pillows of his Forebears.'

He dreamed of Khuft - huge, bearded, speaking in thunder and lightning, calling down the wrath of the heavens on this descendant who was betraying the noble past.

Dios floated past his vision, explaining that as a result of an edict passed several thousand years ago it was essential that he marry a cat.

Various-headed gods vied for his attention, explaining details of godhood, while in the background a distant voice tried to attract his attention and screamed something about not wanting to be buried under a load of stone. But he had no time to concentrate on this, because he saw seven fat cows and seven thin cows, one of them playing a trombone.

But that was an old dream, he dreamt that one nearly every night.

And then there was a man firing arrows at a tortoise . . .

And then he was walking over the desert and found a tiny pyramid, only a few inches high. A wind sprang up and blew away the sand, only now it wasn't a wind, it was the pyramid rising, sand tumbling down its gleaming sides .

And it grew bigger and bigger, bigger than the world, so that at last the pyramid was so big that the whole world was a speck in the centre.

And in the centre of the pyramid, something very strange happened.

And the pyramid grew smaller, taking the world with it. and vanished . . .

Of course, when you're a pharaoh, you get a very high class of obscure dream.

Another day dawned, courtesy of the king, who was curled up on the bed and using his rolled-up clothes as a pillow. Around the stone maze of the palace the servants of the kingdom began to wake up.

Dios's boat slid gently through the water and bumped into the jetty. Dios climbed out and hurried into the palace, bounding up the steps three at a time and rubbing his hands together at the thought of a fresh day laid out before him, every hour and ritual ticking neatly into place. So much to organise, so much to be needed for . . .

The chief sculptor and maker of mummy cases folded up his measure.

'You done a good job there, Master Dil,' he said.

Dil nodded. There was no false modesty between craftsmen. The sculptor gave him a nudge. 'What a team, eh?' he said. 'You pickle 'em, I crate 'em.'

Dil nodded, but rather more slowly. The sculptor looked down at the wax oval in his hands.

'Can't say I think much of the death mask, mind,' he said. Gern, who was working hard on the corner slab on one of the Queen's late cats, which he had been allowed to do all by himself, looked up in horror.

'I done it very careful,' he said sulkily.

'That's the whole point,' said the sculptor.

'I know,' said Dil sadly, 'it's the nose, isn't it.'

'It was more the chin.'