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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 ranted hi beyond the ordinary Because he was alhed 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 seee 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 rooently into the oily eazed into thesadly on the bottoherkin in the jar

He raised his eyes to the sacks in the corner They were full of straw He didn't need telling as 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 druht 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 s very quickly and without anyone noticing, and he doubted whether even the Slers' Guild are of its existence Coht

They found the delta with suspicious ease - howshadow slipped up the river, he wondered - and above the exotic so he could detect the scents of ho Reed pollen Waterlily blosso The rank of lions and reek of hippos

The leading oarsently 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 shadonstream

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 soh reed marshes on the delta

And because he was now a king, he made a mental note to have theshould know things

He stopped, ankle deep in river ooze He had known everything

Arthur had raulls and rivers and loaves of bread sprouting, which suggested he'd drunk tooup with a terrible sense of loss, as his memory failed to hold and leaked away its new treasures It was like the tre 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 hi along, bent by circuht rails Perhaps he hadn't got it in hi

His feet found solid ground The boat had dropped him off a little way downstreaht, the pyraht with their falow

The abodes of the happy dead cah 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 antechae 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 htened his clothing, brushed some mud off his sleeve and set off for the palace

Ahead of hireat statue of Khuft Seven thousand years ago Khuft had led his people out of - Teppic couldn't re, probably, and for thoroughly good reasons; it was at times like this he wished he knew ods of the place had shown hidom And he had entered, yea, and taken possession thereof, that it should ever be the dwelling place of his seed So like that, anyway There were probably more yeas and a few verilys, with added reat patriarchal face, that outstretched arht, told him what he already knew

He was hoain

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 nu that an automorphic resonance field has a semi-infinite number of irresolute prime ideals After that, in order to pass the tiain

BOOK II

The Book of the Dead

Teeks 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 cere examined himself in the mirror, and frowned

'What's it y'

'Bronze, sire Polished bronze,' said Dios, handing hilass ood'

'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 handso 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?'