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'What did you say?' he said

Koomi's eyes rolled His mouth opened and shut, but his voice wisely decided not to coed face close to the priest's pointed nose

'I re around the place A bad hat, if ever I saw one I relared around at the others

'You're all priests, aren't you? Come to say sorry, have you? Where's Dios?'

The ancestors pressed forward,When you've been dead for hundreds of years, you're not inclined to feel generous to those people who assured you that you were going to have a lovely ti Psa to look at but the inside of a lid, was restrained by younger colleagues

Teppicyone anywhere

'Foul shades, was it?' he said

'Er,' said Kooently took the staff froh priest Why are you here?'

It was a perfectly calm and reasonable voice, with overtones of concerned but indubitable authority It was a tone of voice the pharaohs of Djelibeybi had heard for thousands of years, a voice which had regulated the days, prescribed the rituals, cut the tiods to men It was the sound of authority, which stirred antiquethe ancestors and caused them to look embarrassed and shuffle their feet

One of the younger pharaohs lurched forward

'You bastard,' he croaked 'You laid us out and shut us away, one by one, and you went on People thought the name was passed on but it was always you How old are you, Dios?'

There was no sound No-one moved A breeze stirred the dust a little

Dios sighed

'I did not mean to,' he said 'There was so h hours in the day Truly, I did not realise as happening I thought it was refreshing, nothingof the rituals, not the years'

'Co-lived family, do you?' said Teppicymon sarcastically

Dios stared at hi 'Family,' he said at last, his voice softened from its normal bark 'Family Yes I must have had a family, mustn't I But, you know, I can't reoes The pyraely'

'This is Dios, the footnote-keeper of history?' said Teppicyoes from the head But it is all around me Every scroll and book'

'That's the history of the kingdo relaxed a little Sheer horrified fascination was unravelling the knot of fury

'How old are you?' he said

'I think seven thousand years But soer'

'Really seven thousand years?'

'Yes,' said Dios

'How could any ed

'Seven thousand years is just one day at a tiot down on one knee and held up his staff in shaking hands

'O kings,' he said, 'I have always existed only to serve'

There was a long, extremely embarrassed pause

'We will destroy the pyra forward

'You will destroy the kingdom,' said Dios 'I cannot allow it'

'You cannot allow it?'

'Yes What e be without the pyra for the dead,' said Far-re-ptah, 'ill be free'

'But the kingdom will be just another small country,' said Dios, and to their horror the ancestors saw tears in his eyes

'All that we hold dear, you will cast adrift in tieable'

'Then it can take its chances,' said Teppicymon 'Stand aside, Dios'

Dios held up his staff The snake around it uncoiled and hissed at the king

'Be still,' said Dios

Dark lightning crackled between the ancestors Dios stared at the staff in astonishment; it had never done this before

But seven thousand years of his priests had believed, in their hearts, that the staff of Dios could rule this world and the next

In the sudden silence there was the faint chink, high up, of a knife being wedged between two black marble slabs

The pyramid pulsed under Teppic, and the marble was as slippery as ice The inward slope wasn't the help he had expected

The thing, he told hiht ahead, into the eable sections Just like ti it up into slanced briefly over his shoulder He was barely a third of the way up, but he could see the crowds across the river, a grey mass speckled with the pale blobs of upturned faces Closer to, the pale arroup of priests, with Dios in front of the on

The sun was on the horizon

He reached up, located the next crack, found a handhold

Dios spotted Ptaclusp's head peering over the debris, and sent a couple of priests to bring him back IIb followed, his carefully folded brother under his ar?' Dios de to flare off the pyramid,' said Ptaclusp

'How can he do that?'