Pyramids (15 page)

“I see,” said Teppic grimly. “Well, from now on—”

There was a commotion outside the hall. Clearly there was a prisoner outside who was less than confident in the king’s justice, and the king didn’t blame him. He wasn’t at all happy about it, either.

It turned out to be a dark-haired girl, struggling in the arms of two guards and giving them the kind of blows with fist and heel that a man would blush to give. She wasn’t wearing the right kind of costume for the job, either. It would be barely adequate for lying around peeling grapes in.

She saw Teppic and, to his secret delight, flashed him a glance of pure hatred. After an afternoon of being treated like a mentally-deficient statue it was a pleasure to find someone prepared to take an interest in him.

He didn’t know what she had done, but judging by the thumps she was landing on the guards, it was a pretty good bet that she had done it to the very limits of her ability.

Dios bent down to the level of the mask’s ear holes.

“Her name is Ptraci,” he said. “A handmaiden of your father. She has refused to take the potion.”

“What potion?” said Teppic.

“It is customary for a dead king to take servants with him into the Netherworld, sire.”

Teppic nodded gloomily. It was a jealously-guarded privilege, the only way a penniless servant could ensure immortality. He remembered grandfather’s funeral, and the discreet clamor of the old man’s personal servants. It had made father depressed for days.

“Yes, but it’s not compulsory,” he said.

“Yes, sire. It is not compulsory.”

“Father had plenty of servants.”

“I gather she was his favorite, sire.”

“What exactly has she done wrong, then?”

Dios sighed, as one might if one were explaining things to an extremely backward child.

“She has refused to take the potion, sire.”

“Sorry. I thought you said it wasn’t compulsory, Dios.”

“Yes, sire. It is not, sire. It is entirely voluntary. It is an act of free will. And she has refused it, sire.”

“Ah. One of
those
situations,” said Teppic. Djelibeybi was built on those sort of situations. Trying to understand them could drive you mad. If one of his ancestors had decreed that night was day, people would go around groping in the light.

He leaned forward.

“Step forward, young lady,” he said.

She looked at Dios.

“His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII—”

“Do we have to go all through that every time?”

“Yes, sire—Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King, bids you declare your guilt!”

The girl shook herself out of the guards’ grip and faced Teppic, trembling with terror.

“
He
told me he didn’t want to be buried in a pyramid,” she said. “He said the idea of those millions of tons of rock on top of him gave him nightmares. I don’t want to die yet!”

“You refuse to gladly take the poison?” said Dios.

“Yes!”

“But, child,” said Dios, “then the king will have you put to death anyway. Surely it is better to go honorably, to a worthy life in the Netherworld?”

“I don’t want to be a servant in the Netherworld!”

There was a groan of horror from the assembled priests. Dios nodded.

“Then the Eater of Souls will take you,” he said. “Sire, we look to your judgment.”

Teppic realized he was staring at the girl. There was something hauntingly familiar about her which he couldn’t quite put his finger on. “Let her go,” he said.

“His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King, has spoken! Tomorrow at dawn you will be cast to the crocodiles of the river. Great is the wisdom of the king!”

Ptraci turned and glared at Teppic. He said nothing. He did not dare, for fear of what it might become.

She went away quietly, which was worse than sobbing or shouting.

“That is the last case, sire,” said Dios.

“I will retire to my quarters,” said Teppic coldly. “I have much to think about.”

“Therefore I will have dinner sent in,” said the priest. “It will be roast chicken.”

“I hate chicken.”

Dios smiled. “No, sire. On Wednesdays the king always enjoys chicken, sire.”

The pyramids flared. The light they cast on the landscape was curiously subdued, grainy, almost gray, but over the capstone of each tomb a zigzag flame crackled toward the sky.

A faint click of metal and stone sprang Ptraci from a fitful doze into extreme wakefulness. She stood up very carefully and crept toward the window.

Unlike proper cell windows, which should be large and airy and requiring only the removal of a few inconvenient iron bars to ensure the escape of any captives, this window was a slit six inches wide. Seven thousand years had taught the kings along the Djel that cells should be designed to keep prisoners
in
. The only way they could get out through this slit was in bits.

But there was a shadow against the pyramid light, and a voice said, “Psst.”

She flattened herself against the wall and tried to reach up to the slit.

“Who are you?”

“I’m here to help you. Oh damn. Do they call this a window? Look, I’m lowering a rope.”

A thick silken cord, knotted at intervals, dropped past her shoulder. She stared at it for a second or two, and then kicked off her curly-toed shoes and climbed up it.

The face on the other side of the slit was half-concealed by a black hood, but she could just make out a worried expression.

“Don’t despair,” it said.

“I wasn’t despairing. I was trying to get some sleep.”

“Oh. Pardon me, I’m sure. I’ll just go away and leave you, shall I?”

“But in the morning I shall wake up and
then
I’ll despair. What are you standing on, demon?”

“Do you know what a crampon is?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s two of them.”

They stared at each other in silence.

“OK,” said the face at last. “I’ll have to go around and come in through the door. Don’t go away.” And with that it vanished upward.

Ptraci let herself slide back down to the chilly stones of the floor. Come in through the door! She wondered how it could manage that. Humans would need to open it first.

She crouched in the furthest corner of the cell, staring at the small rectangle of wood.

Long minutes went past. At one point she thought she heard a tiny noise, like a gasp.

A little later there was subtle clink of metal, so slight as to be almost beyond the range of hearing.

More time wound onto the spool of eternity and then the silence beyond the cell, which had been the silence caused by absence of sound, very slowly became the silence caused by someone making no noise.

She thought: It’s right outside the door.

There was a pause in which Teppic oiled all the bolts and hinges so that, when he made the final assault, the door swished open in heart-gripping noiselessness.

“I say?” said a voice in the darkness.

Ptraci pressed herself still further into the corner.

“Look, I’ve come to rescue you.”

Now she could make out a blacker shadow in the flarelight. It stepped forward with rather more uncertainty than she would have expected from a demon.

“Are you coming or not?” it said. “I’ve only knocked out the guards, it’s not their fault, but we haven’t got a lot of time.”

“I’m to be thrown to the crocodiles in the morning,” whispered Ptraci. “The king himself decreed it.”

“He probably made a mistake.”

Ptraci’s eyes widened in horrified disbelief.

“The Soul Eater will take me!” she said.

“Do you want it to?”

Ptraci hesitated.

“Well, then,” said the figure, and took her unresisting hand. He led her out of the cell, where she nearly tripped over the prone body of a guard.

“Who is in the other cells?” he said, pointing to the line of doors along the passage.

“I don’t know,” said Ptraci.

“Let’s find out, shall we?”

The figure touched a can to the bolts and hinges of the next door and pushed it open. The flare from the narrow window illuminated a middle-aged man, seated cross-legged on the floor.

“I’m here to rescue you,” said the demon.

The man peered up at him.

“Rescue?” he said.

“Yes. Why are you here?”

The man hung his head. “I spoke blasphemy against the king.”

“How did you do that?”

“I dropped a rock on my foot. Now my tongue is to be torn out.”

The dark figure nodded sympathetically.

“A priest heard you, did he?” he said.

“No. I told a priest. Such words should not go unpunished,” said the man virtuously.

We’re really good at it, Teppic thought. Mere animals couldn’t possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid. “I think we ought to talk about this outside,” he said. “Why not come with me?”

The man pulled back and glared at him.

“You want me to
run away
?” he said.

“Seems a good idea, wouldn’t you say?”

The man stared into his eyes, his lips moving silently. Then he appeared to reach a decision,

“Guards!” he screamed.

The shout echoed through the sleeping palace. His would-be rescuer stared at him in disbelief.

“Mad,” Teppic said. “You’re all mad.”

He stepped out of the room, grabbed Ptraci’s hand, and hurried along the shadowy passages. Behind them the prisoner made the most of his tongue while he still had it and used it to scream a stream of imprecations.

“Where are you taking me?” said Ptraci, as they marched smartly around a corner and into a pillar-barred courtyard.

Teppic hesitated. He hadn’t thought much beyond this point.

“Why do they bother to bolt the doors?” he demanded, eyeing the pillars. “That’s what I want to know. I’m surprised you didn’t wander back to your cell while I was in there.”

“I—I don’t want to die,” she said quietly.

“Don’t blame you.”

“You mustn’t say that! It’s wrong not to want to die!”

Teppic glanced up at the roof around the courtyard and unslung his grapnel.

“I think I
ought
to go back to my cell,” said Ptraci, without actually making any move in that direction. “It’s wrong even to think of disobeying the king.”

“Oh? What happens to you, then?”

“Something bad,” she said vaguely.

“You mean, worse than being thrown to the crocodiles or having your soul taken by the Soul Eater?” said Teppic, and caught the grapnel firmly on some hidden ledge on the flat roof.

“That’s an interesting point,” said Ptraci, winning the Teppic Award for clear thinking.

“Worth considering, isn’t it?” Teppic tested his weight on the cord.

“What you’re saying is, if the worst is going to happen to you
anyway
, you might as well not bother anymore,” said Ptraci. “If the Soul Eater is going to get you whatever you do, you might as well avoid the crocodiles, is that it?”

“You go up first,” said Teppic, “I think someone’s coming.”

“Who
are
you?”

Teppic fished in his pouch. He’d come back to Djeli an eon ago with just the clothes he stood up in, but they were the clothes he’d stood up in throughout his exam. He balanced a Number Two throwing knife in his hand, the steel glinting in the flarelight. It was possibly the only steel in the country; it wasn’t that Djelibeybi hadn’t heard about iron, it was just that if copper was good enough for your great-great-great-great-grandfather, it was good enough for you.

No, the guards didn’t deserve knives. They hadn’t done anything wrong.

His hand closed over the little mesh bag of caltraps. These were a small model, a mere one inch per spike. Caltraps didn’t kill anyone, they just slowed them down a bit. One or two of them in the sole of the foot induced extreme slowness and caution in all except the terminally enthusiastic.

He scattered a few across the mouth of the passage and ran back to the rope, hauling himself up in a few quick swings. He reached the roof just as the leading guards ran under the lintel. He waited until he heard the first curse, and then coiled up the rope and hurried after the girl.

“They’ll catch us,” she said.

“I don’t think so.”

“And then the king will have us thrown to the crocodiles.”

“Oh no, I don’t think—” Teppic paused. It was an intriguing idea.

“He might,” he ventured. “It’s very hard to be sure about anything.”

“So what shall we do now?”

Teppic stared across the river, where the pyramids were ablaze. The Great Pyramid was still under construction, by flarelight; a swarm of blocks, dwarfed by distance, hovered near its tip. The amount of labor Ptaclusp was putting on the job was amazing.

What a flare that will give, he thought. It’ll be seen all the way to Ankh.

“Horrible things, aren’t they,” said Ptraci, behind him.

“Do you think so?”

“They’re creepy. The old king hated them, you know. He said they nailed the Kingdom to the past.”

“Did he say why?”

“No. He just hated them. He was a nice old boy. Very kind. Not like this new one.” She blew her nose and replaced her handkerchief in its scarcely adequate space in her sequined bra.

“Er, what exactly did you have to do? As a handmaiden, I mean?” said Teppic, scanning the rooftop panorama to hide his embarrassment.

She giggled. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“No. Not really.”

“Talk to him, mainly. Or just listen. He could really talk, but he always said no one ever really listened to what he said.”

“Yes,” said Teppic, with feeling. “And that was all, was it?”

She stared at him, and then giggled again. “Oh, that? No, he was very kind. I wouldn’t of minded, you understand, I had all the proper training. Bit of a disappointment, really. The women of my family have served under the kings for centuries, you know.”