Pyramids

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.

‘There you are, then. Anyway, if you were the king, you’d be a god, too. You aren’t acting very god-like at the moment.’

‘Yes? Well. Er.’ Teppic hesitated again. Ptraci’s literal-mindedness meant that innocent sentences had to be carefully examined before being sent out into the world.

‘I’m basically good at making the sun rise,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how, though. And rivers. You want any rivers flooding, I’m your man. God, I mean.’

He lapsed into silence as a thought struck him.

‘I wonder what’s happening in there without me?’ he said.

Ptraci stood up and set off down to the gorge.

‘Where are you going?’

She turned. ‘Well, Mr King or God or assassin, or whatever, can you make water?’

‘What, here?’