The sea. He'd only seen it once, when he was a boy. He couldn't recall a lot about it, except the size. And the noise. And the seagulls.
They'd preyed on his mind. They seemed to have it far better worked out, seagulls. He wished he could come back as one, one day, but of course that wasn't an option if you were a pharaoh. You never came back. You didn't exactly go away, in fact.
'Well, what is it?' said Teppic.
'Try it,' said Chidder, 'just try it. You'll never have the chance again.'
'Seems a shame to spoil it,' said Arthur gallantly looking down at the delicate pattern on his plate. 'What are all the little red things?'
'They're just radishes,' said Chidder dismissively. 'They're not the important part. Go on.'
Teppic reached over with the little wooden fork and skewered a paper-thin sliver of white fish. The squishi chef was scrutinising him with the air of one watching a toddler on his first birthday. So, he realised, was the rest of the restaurant.
He chewed it carefully. It was salty and faintly rubbery, with a hint of sewage outfall.
'Nice?' said Chidder anxiously. Several nearby diners started to clap.
'Different,' Teppic conceded, chewing. 'What is it?'
'Deep sea blowfish,' said Chidder.
'It's all right,' he said hastily as Teppic laid down his fork meaningfully, 'it's perfectly safe provided every bit of stomach, liver and digestive tract is removed, that's why it cost so much, there's no such thing as a second-best blowfish chef, it's the most expensive food in the world, people write poems about it-'
'Could be a taste explosion,' muttered Teppic, getting a grip on himself. Still, it must have been done properly, otherwise the place would now be wearing him as wallpaper. He poked carefully at the sliced roots which occupied the rest of the plate.
'What do these do to you?' he said.
'Well, unless they're prepared in exactly the right way over a six-week period they react catastrophically with your stomach acids,' said Chidder. 'Sorry. I thought we should celebrate with the most expensive meal we could afford.'
'I see. Fish and chips for Men,' said Teppic.
'Do they have any vinegar in this place?' said Arthur, his mouth full. 'And some mushy peas would go down a treat.'
But the wine was good. Not incredibly good, though. Not one of the great vintages. But it did explain why Teppic had gone through the whole of the day with a headache.
It had been the hangunder. His friend had bought four bottles of otherwise quite ordinary white wine. The reason it was so expensive was that the grapes it was made from hadn't actually been planted yet8.
Light moves slowly, lazily on the Disc. It's in no hurry to get anywhere. Why bother? At lightspeed, everywhere is the same place.
King Teppicymon XXVII watched the golden disc float over the edge of the world. A flight of cranes took off from the mist— covered river.
He'd been conscientious, he told himself. No-one had ever explained to him how one made the sun come up and the river flood and the corn grow. How could they? He was the god, after all. He should know. But he didn't, so he'd just gone through life hoping like hell that it would all work properly, and that seemed to have done the trick. The trouble was, though, that if it didn't work, he wouldn't know why not. A recurrent nightmare was of Dios the high priest shaking him awake one morning, only it wouldn't be a morning, of course, and of every light in the palace burning and an angry crowd muttering in the star-lit darkness outside and everyone looking expectantly at him..
And all he'd be able to say was, 'Sorry'.
It terrified him. How easy to imagine the ice forming on the river, the eternal frost riming the palm trees and snapping off the leaves (which would smash when they hit the frozen ground) and the birds dropping lifeless from the sky Shadow swept over him. He looked up through eyes misted with tears at a grey and empty horizon, his mouth dropping open in horror.
He stood up, flinging aside the blanket, and raised both hands in supplication. But the sun had gone. He was the god, this was his job, it was the only thing he was here to do, and he had failed the people.
Now he could hear in his mind's ear the anger of the crowd, a booming roar that began to fill his ears until the rhythm became insistent and familiar, until it reached the point where it pressed in no longer but drew him out, into that salty blue desert where the sun always shone and sleek shapes wheeled across the sky.
The pharaoh raised himself on his toes, threw back his head, spread his wings. And leapt.
As he soared into the sky he was surprised to hear a thump behind him. And the sun came out from behind the clouds.
Later on, the pharaoh felt awfully embarrassed about it.
The three new assassins staggered slowly along the street, constantly on the point of falling over but never quite reaching it, trying to sing 'A Wizard's Staff Has A Knob On The End' in harmony or at least in the same key.
'Tis big an' i'ss round an' weighs three to the-' sang Chidder. 'Blast, what've I stepped in?'
'Anyone know where we are?' said Arthur.
'We — we were headed for the Guildhouse,' said Teppic, 'only must of took the wrong way, that's the river up ahead. Can smell it.'
Caution penetrated Arthur's armour of alcohol.
'Could be dangerous pep — plep — people around, this time o' night,' he hazarded.
'Yep,' said Chidder, with satisfaction, 'us. Got ticket to prove it. Got test and everything. Like to see anyone try anything with us.'
'Right,' agreed Teppic, leaning against him for support of a sort. 'We'll slit them from wossname to thingy.'
'Right!'
They lurched uncertainly out on to the Brass Bridge.
In fact there were dangerous people around in the pre-dawn shadows, and currently these were some twenty paces behind them.
The complex system of criminal Guilds had not actually made Ankh-Morpork a safer place, it just rationalised its dangers and put them on a regular and reliable footing. The major Guilds policed the city with more thoroughness and certainly more success than the old Watch had ever managed, and it was true that any freelance and unlicensed thief caught by the Thieves' Guild would soon find himself remanded in custody by social inquiry reports plus having his knees nailed together9.
However, there were always a few spirits who would venture a precarious living outside the lawless, and the five men of this description were closing cautiously on the trio to introduce them to this week's special offer, a cut throat plus theft and burial in the river mud of your choice.
People normally keep out of the way of assassins because of an instinctive feeling that killing people for very large sums of money is disapproved of by the gods (who generally prefer people to be killed for very small sums of money or for free) and could result in hubris, which is the judgement of the gods. The gods are great believers in justice, at least as far as it extends to humans, and have been known to dispense it so enthusiastically that people miles away are turned into cruet.
However, assassin's black doesn't frighten everyone, and in certain sections of society there is a distinct cachet in killing an assassin. It's rather like smashing a sixer in conkers.
Broadly, therefore, the three even now lurching across the deserted planks of the Brass Bridge were dead drunk assassins and the men behind them were bent on inserting the significant comma.
Chidder wandered into one of the heraldic wooden hippopotami10 — that lined the seaward edge of the bridge, bounced off and flopped over the parapet.
'Feel sick,' he announced.
'Feel free,' said Arthur, 'that's what the river's for.'
Teppic sighed. He was attached to rivers, which he felt were designed to have water lilies on top and crocodiles underneath, and the Ankh always depressed him because if you put a water lily in it, it would dissolve. It drained the huge silty plains all the way to the Ramtop mountains, and by the time it had passed through Ankh-Morpork, pop. One million, it could only be called a liquid
because it moved faster than the land around it; actually being sick in it would probably make it, on average, marginally cleaner.
He stared down at the thin trickle that oozed between the central pillars, and then raised his gaze to the grey horizon.
'Sun's coming up,' he announced.
'Don't remember eating that,' muttered Chidder.
Teppic stepped back, and a knife ripped past his nose and buried itself in the buttocks of the hippo next to him.
Five figures stepped out of the mists. The three assassins instinctively drew together.
'You come near me, you'll really regret it,' moaned Chidder, clutching his stomach. 'The cleaning bill will be horrible.'
'Well now, what have we here?' said the leading thief. This is the sort of thing that gets said in these circumstances.
'Thieves' Guild, are you?' said Arthur.
'No,' said the leader, 'we're the small and unrepresentative minority that gets the rest a bad name. Give us your valuables and weapons, please. This won't make any difference to the outcome, you understand. It's just that corpse robbing is unpleasant and degrading.'
'We could rush them,' said Teppic, uncertainly.
'Don't look at me,' said Arthur, 'I couldn't find my arse with an atlas.'
'You'll really be sorry when I'm sick,' said Chidder. Teppic was aware of the throwing knives stuffed up either sleeve, and that the chances of him being able to get hold of one in time still to be alive to throw it were likely to be very small.
At times like this religious solace is very important. He turned and looked towards the sun, just as it withdrew from the cloudbanks of the dawn.
There was a tiny dot in the centre of it.
The late King Teppicymon XXVII opened his eyes.
'I was flying,' he whispered, 'I remember the feeling of wings. What am I doing here?'
He tried to stand up. There was a temporary feeling of heaviness, which suddenly dropped away so that he rose to his feet almost without any effort. He looked down to see what had caused it.
'Oh dear,' he said.
The culture of the river kingdom had a lot to say about death and what happened afterwards. In fact it had very little to say about life, regarding it as a sort of inconvenient prelude to the main event and something to be hurried through as politely as possible, and therefore the pharaoh reached the conclusion that he was dead very quickly. The sight of his mangled body on the sand below him played a major part in this.
There was a greyness about everything. The landscape had a ghostly look, as though he could walk straight through it. Of course, he thought, I probably can.
He rubbed the analogue of his hands. Well, this is it. This is where it gets interesting; this is where I start to really live.
Behind him a voice said, GOOD MORNING.
The king turned.
'Hallo,' he said. 'You'd be-'
DEATH, said Death.
The king looked surprised.
'I understood that Death came as a three-headed giant scarab beetle,' he said.
Death shrugged. WELL. NOW YOU KNOW.
'What's that thing in your hand?'
THIS? IT'S A SCYTHE.
'Strange-looking object, isn't it?' said the pharaoh. 'I thought Death carried the Flail of Mercy and the Reaping Hook of Justice.'
Death appeared to think about this.
WHAT IN? he said.
'Pardon?'
ARE WE STILL TALKING ABOUT A GIANT BEETLE?
'Ah. In his mandibles, I suppose. But I think he's got arms in one of the frescoes in the palace.' The king hesitated. 'Seems a bit silly, really, now I come to tell someone. I mean, a giant beetle with arms. And the head of an ibis, I seem to recall.'
Death sighed. He was not a creature of Time, and therefore past and future were all one to him, but there had been a period when he'd made an effort to appear in whatever form the client expected. This foundered because it was usually impossible to know what the client was expecting until after they were dead. And then he'd decided that, since no-one ever really expected to die anyway, he might as well please himself and he'd henceforth stuck to the familiar black-cowled robe, which was neat and very familiar and acceptable everywhere, like the best credit cards.
'Anyway,' said the pharaoh, 'I expect we'd better be going.'
WHERE TO?
'Don't you know?'
I AM HERE ONLY TO SEE THAT YOU DIE AT THE APPOINTED TIME. WHAT HAPPENS NEXT IS UP TO YOU.
'Well . . .' The king automatically scratched his chin. 'I suppose I have to wait until they've done all the preparations and so forth. Mummified me. And built a bloody pyramid. Um. Do I have to hang around here to wait for all that?'
I ASSUME SO. Death clicked his fingers and a magnificent white horse ceased its grazing on some of the garden greenery and trotted towards him.
'Oh. Well, I think I shall look away. They take all the squishy inside bits out first, you know.' A look of faint worry crossed his face. Things that had seemed perfectly sensible when he was alive seemed a little suspect now that he was dead.
'It's to preserve the body so that it may begin life anew in the Netherworld,' he added, in a slightly perplexed voice. 'And then they wrap you in bandages. At least that seems logical.'
He rubbed his nose. 'But then they put all this food and drink in the pyramid with you. Bit weird, really.'
WHERE ARE ONE'S INTERNAL ORGANS AT THIS POINT?
'That's the funny thing, isn't it? They're in a jar in the next room,' said the king, his voice edged with doubt. 'We even put a damn great model cart in dad's pyramid.'
His frown deepened. 'Solid wood, it was,' he said, half to himself, 'with gold leaf all over it. And four wooden bullocks to pull it. Then we whacked a damn great stone over the door . . .'
He tried to think, and found that it was surprisingly easy. New ideas were pouring into his mind in a cold, clear stream. They had to do with the play of light on the rocks, the deep blue of the sky, the manifold possibilities of the world that stretched away on every side of him. Now that he didn't have a body to importune him with its insistent demands the world seemed full of astonishments, but unfortunately among the first of them was the fact that much of what you thought was true now seemed as solid and reliable as marsh gas. And also that, just as he was fully equipped to enjoy the world, he was going to be buried inside a pyramid.
When you die, the first thing you lose is your life. The next thing is your illusions.
I CAN SEE YOU HAVE GOT A LOT TO THINK ABOUT, said Death, mounting up. AND NOW, IF YOU'LL EXCUSE ME— 'Hang on a moment-'
YES?
'When I . . . fell, I could have sworn that I was flying.'
THAT PART OF YOU THAT WAS DIVINE DID FLY, NATURALLY. YOU ARE NOW FULLY MORTAL.
'Mortal?'
TAKE IT FROM ME. I KNOW ABOUT THESE THINGS.
'Oh. Look, there's quite a few questions I'd like to ask-'
THERE ALWAYS ARE. I'M SORRY. Death clapped his heels to his horse's flanks, and vanished.
The king stood there as several servants came hurrying along the palace wall, slowed down as they approached his corpse, and advanced with caution.
'Are you all right, O jewelled master of the sun?' one of them ventured.
'No, I'm not,' snapped the king, who was having some of his basic assumptions about the universe severely raffled, and that never puts anyone in a good mood. 'I'm by way of being dead just at the moment. Amazing, isn't it,' he added bitterly.
'Can you hear us, O divine bringer of the morning?' inquired the other servant, tiptoeing closer.
'I've just fallen off a hundred foot wall on to my head, what do you think?' shouted the king.
'I don't think he can hear us, Jahmet,' said the other servant.
'Listen,' said the king, whose urgency was equalled only by the servants' total inability to hear anything he was saying, 'you must find my son and tell him to forget about the pyramid business, at least until I've thought about it a bit, there are one or t
wo points which seem a little self-contradictory about the whole afterlife arrangements, and-'
'Shall I shout?' said Jahmet.
'I don't think you can shout loud enough. I think he's dead.'
Jahmet looked down at the stiffening corpse.
'Bloody hell,' he said eventually. 'Well, that's tomorrow up the spout for a start.'
The sun, unaware that it was making its farewell performance, continued to drift smoothly above the rim of the world. And out of it, moving faster than any bird should be able to fly, a seagull bore down on Ankh-Morpork, on the Brass Bridge and eight still figures, on one staring face .
Seagulls were common enough in Ankh. But as this one flew over the group it uttered one long, guttural scream that caused three of the thieves to drop their knives. Nothing with feathers ought to have been able to make a noise like that. It had claws in it.
The bird wheeled in a tight circle and fluttered to a perch on a convenient wooden hippo, where it glared at the group with mad red eyes.
The leading thief tore his fascinated gaze away from it just as he heard Arthur say, quite pleasantly, 'This is a number two throwing knife. I got ninety-six per cent for throwing knives. Which eyeball don't you need?'
The leader stared at him. As far as the other young assassins were concerned, he noticed, one was still staring fixedly at the seagull while the other was busy being noisily sick over the parapet.
'There's only one of you,' he said. 'There's five of us.
'But soon there will only be four of you,' said Arthur. Moving slowly, like someone in a daze, Teppic reached out his hand to the seagull. With any normal seagull this would have resulted in the loss of a thumb, but the creature hopped on to it with the smug air of the master returning to the old plantation.
It seemed to make the thieves increasingly uneasy. Arthur's smile wasn't helping either.
'That's a nice bird,' said the leader, in the inanely cheerful tones of the extremely worried. Teppic was dreamily stroking its bullet head.
'I think it would be a good idea if you went away,' said Arthur, as the bird shuffled sideways on to Teppic's wrist. Gripping with webbed feet, thrusting out its wings to maintain its balance, it should have looked clownish but instead looked full of hidden power, as though it was an eagle's secret identity. When it opened its mouth, revealing a ridiculous purple bird tongue, there was a suggestion that this seagull could do a lot more than menace a seaside tomato sandwich.
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