‘Oh, Sod,’ moaned Gern.
Dil struck him across the arm.
‘Stop that,’ he said. ‘And come with me.’
‘Oh, master, whatever shall we do?’
Dil looked around at the sleeping city. He hadn’t the faintest idea.
‘We’ll go to the palace,’ he said firmly. ‘It’s probably a trick of the, of the, of the dark. Anyway, the sun will be up presently.’
He strode off, wishing he could change places with Gern and show just a hint of gibbering terror. The apprentice followed him at a sort of galloping creep.
‘I can see shadows against the stars, master! Can you see them, master? Around the edge of the world, master!’
‘Just mists, boy,’ said Dil, resolutely keeping his eyes fixed in front of him and maintaining a dignified posture as appropriate to the Keeper of the Left Hand Door of the Natron Lodge and holder of several medals for needlework.
‘There,’ he said. ‘See, Gern, the sun is coming up!’
They stood and watched it.
Then Gern whimpered, very quietly.
Rising up the sky, very slowly, was a great flaming ball. And it was being pushed by a dung beetle bigger than worlds.
Book III
The Book of the New Son
The sun rose and, because this wasn’t the Old Kingdom out here, it was a mere ball of flaming gas. The purple night of the high desert evaporated under its blowlamp glare. Lizards scuttled into cracks in the rocks. You Bastard settled himself down in the sparse shadow of what was left of the syphacia bushes, peered haughtily at the landscape, and began to chew cud and calculate square roots in base seven.
Teppic and Ptraci eventually found the shade of a limestone overhang, and sat glumly staring out at the waves of heat wobbling off the rocks.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Ptraci. ‘Have you looked everywhere?’
‘It’s a country! It can’t just bloody well fall through a hole in the ground!’
‘Where is it, then?’ said Ptraci evenly.
Teppic growled. The heat struck like a hammer, but he strode out over the rocks as though three hundred square miles could perhaps have been hiding under a pebble or behind a bush.
The fact was that the track dipped between the cliffs, but almost immediately rose again and continued across the dunes into what was quite clearly Tsort. He’d recognized a wind-eroded sphinx that had been set up as a boundary marker; legend said it prowled the borders in times of dire national need, although legend wasn’t sure why.
He knew they had galloped into Ephebe. He should be looking across the fertile, pyramid-speckled valley of the Djel that lay between the two countries.
He’d spent an hour looking for it.
It was inexplicable. It was uncanny. It was also extremely embarrassing.
He shaded his eyes and stared around for the thousandth time at the silent, baking landscape. And moved his head. And saw Djelibeybi.
It flashed across his vision in an instant. He jerked his eyes back and saw it again, a brief flash of misty colour that vanished as soon as he concentrated on it.
Some minutes later Ptraci peered out of the shade and saw him get down on his hands and knees. When he started turning over rocks she decided it was time he should come back in out of the sun.
He shook her hand off his shoulder, and gestured impatiently.
‘I’ve found it!’ He pulled a knife from his boot and started poking at the stones.
‘Where?’
‘Here!’
She laid a ringed hand on his forehead.
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I see. Yes. Good. Now I think you’d better come into the shade.’
‘No, I mean it! Here! Look!’
She hunkered down and stared at the rock, to humour him.
‘There’s a crack,’ she said, doubtfully.
‘Look at it, will you? You have to turn your head and sort of look out of the corner of your eye.’ Teppic’s dagger smacked into the crack, which was no more than a faint line on the rock.
‘Well, it goes on a long way,’ said Ptraci, staring along the burning pavement.
‘All the way from the Second Cataract to the Delta,’ said Teppic. ‘Covering your eye with one hand helps. Please give it a try. Please!’
She put one hesitant hand over her eye and squinted obediently at the rock.
Eventually she said, ‘It’s no good, I can’t — seeee—’
She stayed motionless for a moment and then flung herself sideways on to the rocks. Teppic stopped trying to hammer the knife into the crack and crawled over to her.
‘I was right on the edge!’ she wailed.
‘You saw it?’ he said hopefully.
She nodded and, with great care, got to her feet and backed away.
‘Did your eyes feel as though they were being turned inside out?’ said Teppic.
‘Yes,’ said Ptraci coldly. ‘Can I have my bangles, please?’
‘What?’
‘My bangles. You put them in your pockets. I want them, please.’
Teppic shrugged, and fished in his pouch. The bangles were mostly copper, with a few bits of chipped enamel. Here and there the craftsman had tried, without much success, to do something interesting with twisted bits of wire and lumps of coloured glass. She took them and slipped them on.
‘Do they have some occult significance?’ he said.
‘What’s occult mean?’ she said vaguely.
‘Oh. What do you need them for, then?’
‘I told you. I don’t feel properly dressed without them on.’
Teppic shrugged, and went back to rocking his knife in the crack.
‘Why are you doing that?’ she said. He stopped and thought about it.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But you did see the valley, didn’t you.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, then?’
‘Well what?’
Teppic rolled his eyes. ‘Didn’t you think it was a bit, well, odd? A whole country just more or less vanishing? It’s something you don’t bloody well see every day, for gods’ sake!’
‘How should I know? I’ve never been out of the valley before. I don’t know what it’s supposed to look like from outside. And don’t swear.’
Teppic shook his head. ‘I think I will go and lie down in the shade,’ he said. ‘What’s left of it,’ he added, for the brass light of the sun was burning away the shadows. He staggered over to the rocks and stared at her.
‘The whole valley has just closed up,’ he managed at last. ‘All those people …’
‘I saw cooking fires,’ said Ptraci, slumping down beside him.
‘It’s something to do with the pyramid,’ he said. ‘It looked very strange just before we left. It’s magic, or geometry, or one of those things. How do you think we can get back?’
‘I don’t want to go back. Why should I want to go back? It’s the crocodiles for me. I’m not going back, not just for crocodiles.’
‘Um. Perhaps I could pardon you, or something,’ said Teppic.
‘Oh yes,’ said Ptraci, looking at her nails. ‘You said you were the king, didn’t you.’
‘I am the king! That’s my kingdom over—’ Teppic hesitated, not knowing in which direction to point his finger — ‘somewhere. I’m king of it.’
‘You don’t look like the king,’ said Ptraci.
‘Why not?’
‘He had a golden mask on.’
‘That was me!’
‘So you ordered me thrown to the crocodiles?’
‘Yes! I mean, no.’ Teppic hesitated. ‘I mean, the king did. I didn’t. In a way. Anyway, I was the one who rescued you,’ he added gallantly.