Dil wiped his hands on a rag, and sighed. Possibly thirty-five years in the funeral business, which had given him a steady hand, a philosophic manner and a keen interest in vegetarianism, had also granted him powers of hearing beyond the ordinary. Because he was almost persuaded that, right beside his ear, someone else sighed too.
The king wandered sadly over to the other side of the room, and stared at the dull liquid of the preparation vat.
Funny, that. When he was alive it had all seemed so sensible, so obvious. Now he was dead it looked a huge waste of effort.
It was beginning to annoy him. He watched Dil and his apprentice tidy up, burn some ceremonial resins, lift him - it - up, carry it respectfully across the room and slide it gently into the oily embrace of the preservative. Teppicymon XXVII gazed into the murky depths at his own body lying sadly on the bottom, like the last pickled gherkin in the jar.
He raised his eyes to the sacks in the corner. They were full of straw. He didn't need telling what was going to be done with it.
The boat didn't glide. It insinuated itself through the water, dancing across the waves on the tips of the twelve oars, spreading like an oil slick, gliding like a bird. It was man black and shaped like a shark.
There was no drummer to beat the rhythm. The boat didn't want the weight. Anyway, he'd have needed the full kit, including snares.
Teppic sat between the lines of silent rowers, in the narrow gully that was the cargo hold. Better not to speculate what cargoes. The boat looked designed to move very small quantities of things very quickly and without anyone noticing, and he doubted whether even the Smugglers' Guild was aware of its existence. Commerce was more interesting than he thought.
They found the delta with suspicious ease - how many times had this whispering shadow slipped up the river, he wondered - and above the exotic smells from the mysterious former cargo he could detect the scents of home. Crocodile dung. Reed pollen. Waterlily blossoms. Lack of plumbing. The rank of lions and reek of hippos.
The leading oarsman tapped him gently on the shoulder and motioned him up, steadied him as he stepped overboard into a few feet of water. By the time he'd waded ashore the boat had turned and was a mere suspicion of a shadow downstream.
Because he was naturally curious, Teppic wondered where it would lie up during the day, since it had the look about it of a boat designed to travel only under cover of darkness, and decided that it'd probably lurk somewhere in the high reed marshes on the delta.
And because he was now a king, he made a mental note to have the marshes patrolled periodically from now on. A king should know things.
He stopped, ankle deep in river ooze. He had known everything.
Arthur had rambled on vaguely about seagulls and rivers and loaves of bread sprouting, which suggested he'd drunk too much. All Teppic could remember was waking up with a terrible sense of loss, as his memory failed to hold and leaked away its new treasures. It was like the tremendous insights that come in dreams and vanish on waking. He'd known everything, but as soon as he tried to remember what it was it poured out of his head, as from a leaky bucket.
But it had left him with a new sensation. Before, his life had been ambling along, bent by circumstance. Now it was clicking along on bright rails. Perhaps he hadn't got it in him to be an assassin, but he knew he could be a king.
His feet found solid ground. The boat had dropped him off a little way downstream of the palace and, blue in the moonlight, the pyramid flares on the far bank were filling the night with their familiar glow.
The abodes of the happy dead came in all sizes although not, of course, in all shapes. They clustered thickly nearer the city, as though the dead like company.
And even the oldest ones were all complete. No-one had borrowed any of the stones to build houses or make roads. Teppic felt obscurely proud of that. No-one had unsealed the doors and wandered around inside to see if the dead had any old treasures they weren't using any more. And every day, without fail, food was left in the little antechambers; the commissaries of the dead occupied a large part of the palace.
Sometimes the food went, sometimes it didn't. The priests, however, were very clear on this point. Regardless of whether the food was consumed or not, it had been eaten by the dead. Presumably they enjoyed it; they never complained, or came back for seconds.
Look after the dead, said the priests, and the dead would look after you. After all, they were in the majority.
Teppic pushed aside the reeds. He straightened his clothing, brushed some mud off his sleeve and set off for the palace.
Ahead of him, dark against the flarelight, stood the great statue of Khuft. Seven thousand years ago Khuft had led his people out of - Teppic couldn't remember, but somewhere where they hadn't liked being, probably, and for thoroughly good reasons; it was at times like this he wished he knew more history - and had prayed in the desert and the gods of the place had shown him the Old Kingdom. And he had entered, yea, and taken possession thereof, that it should ever be the dwelling place of his seed. Something like that, anyway. There were probably more yeas and a few verilys, with added milk and honey. But the sight of that great patriarchal face, that outstretched arm, that chin you could crack stones on, bold in the flarelight, told him what he already knew.
He was home, and he was never going to leave again.
The sun began to rise.
The greatest mathematician alive on the Disc, and in fact the last one in the Old Kingdom, stretched out in his stall and counted the pieces of straw in his bedding. Then he estimated the number of nails in the wall. Then he spent a few minutes proving that an automorphic resonance field has a semi-infinite number of irresolute prime ideals. After that, in order to pass the time, he ate his breakfast again.
BOOK II
The Book of the Dead
Two weeks went past. Ritual and ceremony in their due times kept the world under the sky and the stars in their courses. It was astonishing what ritual and ceremony could do.
The new king examined himself in the mirror, and frowned.
'What's it made of?' he said. 'It's rather foggy.'
'Bronze, sire. Polished bronze,' said Dios, handing him the Flail of Mercy.
'In Ankh-Morpork we had glass mirrors with silver on the back. They were very good.'
'Yes, sire. Here we have bronze, sire.'
'Do I really have to wear this gold mask?'
'The Face of the Sun, sire. Handed down through all the ages. Yes, sire. On all public occasions, sire.'
Teppic peered out through the eye slots. It was certainly a handsome face. It smiled faintly. He remembered his father visiting the nursery one day and forgetting to take it off; Teppic had screamed the place down.
'It's rather heavy.'
'It is weighted with the centuries,' said Dios, and passed over the obsidian Reaping Hook of Justice.
'Have you been a priest long, Dios?'
'Many years, sire, man and eunuch. Now-'
'Father said you were high priest even in grandad's time. You must be very old.'
'Well-preserved, sire. The gods have been kind to me,' said Dios, in the face of the evidence. 'And now, sire, if we could just hold this as well . .
'What is it?'
'The Honeycomb of Increase, sire. Very important.'
Teppic juggled it into position.
'I expect you've seen a lot of changes,' he said politely.
A look of pain passed over the old priest's face, but quickly, as if it was in a hurry to get away. 'No, sire,' he said smoothly, 'I have been very fortunate.'
'Oh. What's this?'
'The Sheaf of Plenty, sire. Extremely significant, very symbolic.'
'If you could just tuck it under my arm, then. . . Have you ever heard of plumbing, Dios?'
The priest snapped his fingers at one of the attendants. 'No, sire,' he said, and leaned forward. 'This is the Asp of Wisdom. I'll just tuck it in here, shall I?'
'It's like buckets, but not as, um, smelly.'
'Sounds dreadful, sire. The smell keeps bad influences away, I have always understood. This, sire, is the Gourd of the Waters of the Heavens. If we could just raise our chin . . .'
'This is all necessary, is it?' said Teppic indistinctly. 'It is traditional, sire. If we could just rearrange things a little, sire. . . here is the Three-Pronged Spear of the Waters of the Earth; I think we will be able to get this finger around it. We shall have to see about our marriage, sire.'
'I'm not sure we would be compatible, Dios.'
The high priest smiled with his mouth. 'Sire is pleased to jest, sire,' he said urbanely. 'However, it is essential that you marry.'
'I am afraid all the girls I know are in Ankh-Morpork,' said Teppic airily, knowing in his heart that this broad statement referred to Mrs Collar, who had been his bedder in the sixth form, and one of the serving wenches who'd taken a shine to him and always gave him extra gravy. (But . . . and his blood pounded at the memory.. . there had been the annual Assassins' Ball and, because the young assassins were trained to move freely in society and were expected to dance well, and because well-cut black silk and long legs attracted a certain type of older woman, they'd whirled the night away through baubons, galliards and slow-stepping pavonines, until the air thickened with musk and hunger. Chidder, whose simple open face and easygoing manner were a winner every time, came back to bed very late for days afterwards and tended to fall asleep during lessons . .
'Quite unsuitable, sire. We would require a consort well-versed in the observances. Of course, our aunt is available, sire.'
There was a clatter. Dios sighed, and motioned the attendants to pick things up.
'If we could just begin again, sire? This is the Cabbage of Vegetative Increase-'
'Sorry,' said Teppic, 'I didn't hear you say I should marry my aunt, did I?'
'You did, sire. Interfamilial marriage is a proud tradition of our lineage,' said Dios.
'But my aunt is my aunt!'
Dios rolled his eyes. He'd advised the late king repeatedly about the education of his son, but the man was stubborn, stubborn. Now he'd have to do it on the fly. The gods were testing him, he decided. It took decades to make a monarch, and he had weeks to do it in.
'Yes, sire,' he said patiently. 'Of course. And she is also your uncle, your cousin and your father.'
'Hold on. My father-'
The priest raised his hand soothingly. 'A technicality,' he said. 'Your great-great-grandmother once declared she is king as a matter of political expediency and I don't believe the edict is ever rescinded.'
'But she was a woman, though?'
Dios looked shocked. 'Oh no, sire. She is a man. She herself declared this.'
'But look, a chap's aunt-'
'Quite so, sire. I quite understand.'
'Well, thank you,' said Teppic.
'It is a great shame that we have no sisters.'
'Sisters!'
'It does not do to water the divine blood, sire. The sun might not like it. Now this, sire, is the Scapula of Hygiene. Where would you like it put?'
King Teppicymon XXVII was watching himself being stuffed. It was just as well he didn't feel hunger these days. Certainly he would never want to eat chicken again.
'Very nice stitching there, master.'
'Just keep your finger still, Gern.'
'My mother does stitching like that. She's got a pinny with stitching like that, has our mum,' said Gern conversationally.
'Keep it still, I said.'
'It's got all ducks and hens on it,' Gern supplied helpfully. Dil concentrated on the job in hand. It was good workmanship, he was prepared to admit. The Guild of Embalmers and Allied Trades had awarded him medals for it.