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The ancestors dropped away, sliding back down the pyra Teppic alone on a few square feet of rock

A couple of stars came out

He sahite shapes below as the ancestors hurried away on so speed towards the broad band of the river

The gods abandoned their interest in Dios, this strange little huod, a crocodile-headed thing, jerked on to the plaza before the pyramid, squinted up at Teppic, and reached out towards hi what sort was appropriate for gods

And, along the Djel, the pyrare store of hoarded tian to shake Even the gods looked bewildered

IIb snatched his father's ared him away

'Come on!' he yelled into his ear 'We can't be around here when it goes off! Otherwise you'll be put to bed on a coathanger!'

Around them several other pyramids struck their flares, thin and reedy affairs that were barely visible in the afterglow

'Dad! I said we've got to go!'

Ptaclusp was dragged backwards across the flagstones, still staring at the hulking outline of the Great Pyramid

'There's soure alone on the plaza

IIb peered into the glooh priest,' he said 'I expect he's got some plan in mind, best not to meddle in the affairs of priests, noill you cood turned its snout back and forth, trying to focus on Teppic without the advantage of binocular vision This close, its body was slightly transparent, as though soot bored before it was ti it to powder

A hand like a cluster of canoes with claws on hovered over Teppic The pyramid trembled and the stone under his feet felt war to flare

The hand descended Teppic sank on one knee and, out of desperation, raised the knife over his head in both hands

The light glinted for a moment off the tip of the blade and then the Great Pyrain with, sending up a spire of eye-torturing fladoht, a flaht have turned any watchers not just into a pillar of salt but into a complete condiment set of their choice It exploded like an unwound dandelion, silent as starlight, searing as a supernova

Only after it had been bathing the necropolis in its impossible brilliance for several seconds did the sound coh the bones, creeps into every cell of the body, and tries with some success to turn them inside out It was too loud to be called noise There is sound so loud that it prevents itself fro heard, and this was that kind of sound

Eventually it condescended to drop out of the cos it had ever experienced

The noise stopped, filling the air with the darkthe night with blue and purple afteries It was not the silence and darkness of conclusion but of pause, like the moment of equilibrium when a thrown ball runs out of acceleration but has yet to have gravity drawn to its attention and, for a brief moment, thinks that the worst is over

This ti out of the clear sky and a swirl in the air that becalow, became a flame, beca into the rounded on the lesser tombs around it, so that serpents of white fire burned their way from pyramid to pyramid across the necropolis and the air filled with the stink of burning stone

In the middle of the firestorm the Great Pyramid appeared to lift up a few inches, on a bearees This was almost certainly the special type of optical illusion which can take place even though noone is actually looking at it

And then, with deceptive slowness and considerable dignity, it exploded

It was almost too crass a word What it did was this: it ca-sized chunks which drifted gently away fro serenely out and over the necropolis Several of the them in a lazy, unselfconscious way, and then bounded on in silence until they ploughed to a halt behind a small mountain of rubble

Only then did the boo tidoroped ahead, gingerly, until he walked into soht about the kind of people he'd seen walking around lately, but thought didn't co appeared to have hit him on the head recently

'Is that you, lad?' he ventured

'Is that you, dad?'

'Yes,' said Ptaclusp

'It's lad it's you, son'

'Can you see anything?'

'No It's all ht it was me'

'It is you, isn't it? You said'

'Yes, dad'

'Is your brother all right?'

'I've got hi as nothing's happened to hi over lu exploded, dad,' said IIb, slowly 'I think it was the pyramid'

Ptaclusp rubbed the top of his head, where two tons of flying rock had co hiy ceht from Merco the Ephebian, I expect-'

'I think this was a bit worse than a moody lintel, dad,' said IIb 'In fact, I think it was a lot worse'

'It looked a bit wossname, a bit on the sandy side-'

'I think you should find somewhere to sit down, dad,' said IIb, as kindly as possible 'Here's Two-Ay Hang on to hi over a slab of what felt very suspiciously like black marble What he wanted, he decided, was a priest They had to be useful for soht need one For solace, or possibly, he felt obscurely, to beat their head in with a rock

What he found instead was so IIb helped hiht be an it - and sat him on another lump of, yes, almost certainlyin the rubble

'I'ure muttered