Pyramids

‘She can play the dulcimer,’ said the ghost of Teppicymon XXVII, apropos of nothing much.^{32} ‘Not very well, mind you. She’s up to page five of “Little Pieces for Tiny Fingers”.’

Teppic crept to the passage leading out of the embalming room and listened hard. Silence ruled in the palace, broken only by heavy breathing and the occasional clink behind him as Ptraci stripped herself of her jewellery. He crept back.

‘Please hurry up,’ he said, ‘we haven’t got a lot of—’ Ptraci was crying.

‘Er,’ said Teppic. ‘Er.’

‘Some of these were presents from my granny,’ sniffed Ptraci. ‘The old king gave me some, too. These earrings have been in my family for ever such a long time. How would you like it if you had to do it?’

‘You see, jewellery isn’t just something she wears,’ said the ghost of Teppicymon XXVII. ‘It’s part of who she is.’ My word, he added to himself, that’s probably an Insight. Why is it so much easier to think when you’re dead?

‘I don’t wear any,’ said Teppic.

‘You’ve got all those daggers and things.’

‘Well, I need them to do my job.’

‘Well then.’

‘Look, you don’t have to leave them here, you can put them in my pouch,’ he said. ‘But we must be going. Please!’

‘Goodbye,’ said the ghost sadly, watching them sneak out to the courtyard. He floated back to his corpse, who wasn’t the best of company.

The breeze was stronger when they reached the roof. It was hotter, too, and dry.

Across the river one or two of the older pyramids were already sending up their flares, but they were weak and looked wrong.

‘I feel itchy,’ said Ptraci. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘It feels like we’re in for a thunderstorm,’ said Teppic, staring across the river at the Great Pyramid. Its blackness had intensified, so that it was a triangle of deeper darkness in the night. Figures were running around its base like lunatics watching their asylum burn.

‘What’s a thunderstorm?’

‘Very hard to describe,’ he said, in a preoccupied voice. ‘Can you see what they’re doing over there?’

Ptraci squinted across the river.

‘They’re very busy,’ she said.

‘Looks more like panic to me.’

A few more pyramids flared, but instead of roaring straight up the flames flickered and lashed backward and forwards, driven by intangible winds.

Teppic shook himself. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get you away from here.’

‘I said we should have capped it this evening,’ shouted Ptaclusp IIb above the screaming of the pyramid. ‘I can’t float it up now, the turbulence up there must be terrific!’

The ice of day was boiling off the black marble, which was already warm to the touch. He stared distractedly at the capstone on its cradle and then at his brother, who was still in his nightshirt.

‘Where’s father?’ he said.

‘I sent one of us to go and wake him up,’ said IIa.

‘Who?’

‘One of you, actually.’

‘Oh,’ IIb stared again at the capstone. ‘It’s not that heavy,’ he said. ‘Two of us could manhandle it up there.’ He gave his brother an enquiring look.

‘You must be mad. Send some of the men to do it.’

‘They’ve all run away—’

Down river another pyramid tried to flare, spluttered, and then ejected a screaming, ragged flame that arched across the sky and grounded near the top of the Great Pyramid itself.

‘It’s interfering with the others now!’ shouted IIb. ‘Come on. We’ve got to flare it off, it’s the only way!’

About a third of the way up the pyramid’s flanks a crackling blue zigzag arced out and struck itself on a stone sphinx. The air above it boiled.

The two brothers slung the stone between them and staggered to the scaffolding, while the dust around them whirled into strange shapes.

‘Can you hear something?’ said IIb, as they stumbled on to the first platform.

‘What, you mean the fabric of time and space being put through the wringer?’ said IIa.

The architect gave his brother a look of faint admiration. It was an unusual remark for an accountant. Then his face returned to its previous look of faint terror.

‘No, not that,’ he said.

‘Well, the sound of the very air itself being subjected to horrible tortures?’

‘Not that, either,’ said IIb, vaguely annoyed. ‘I mean the creaking noise.’

Three more pyramids struck their discharges, which fizzled through the roiling clouds overhead and poured into the black marble above them.

‘Can’t hear anything like that,’ said IIa.

‘I think it’s coming from the pyramid.’

‘Well, you can put your ear against it if you like, but I’m not going to.’

The scaffolding swayed in the storm as they eased their way up another ladder, the heavy capstone rocking between them.

‘I said we shouldn’t do it,’ muttered the accountant, as the stone slid gently on to his toes. ‘We shouldn’t have built this.’

‘Just shut up and lift your end, will you?’