Pyramids (Discworld 07).pdf

Pyramids

by Terry Pratchett

ISBN 0-552-13461-9

BOOK I

The Book of Going Forth

Nothing but stars, scattered across the blackness as though the Creator had smashed the

windscreen of his car and hadn't bothered to stop to sweep up the pieces. This is the gulf

between universes, the chill deeps of space that contain nothing but the occasional random

molecule, a few lost comets and...

... but a circle of blackness shifts slightly, the eye reconsiders perspective, and what was

apparently the awesome distance of interstellar wossname becomes a world under darkness, its

stars the lights of what will charitably be called civilisation.

For, as the world tumbles lazily, it is revealed as the Discworld - flat, circular, and carried

through space on the back of four elephants who stand on the back of Great A'tuin, the only

turtle ever to feature on the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram, a turtle ten thousand miles long,

dusted with the frost of dead comets, meteor-pocked, albedo-eyed. No-one knows the reason for

all this, but it is probably quantum. Much that is weird could happen on a world on the back of a

turtle like that.

It's happening already.

The stars below are campfires, out in the desert, and the lights of remote villages high in

the forested mountains. Towns are smeared nebulae, cities are vast constellations; the great

sprawling city of Ankh-Morpork, for example, glows like a couple of colliding galaxies.

But here, away from the great centres of population, where the Circle Sea meets the

desert, there is a line of cold blue fire. Flames as chilly as the slopes of Hell roar towards the sky.

Ghostly light flickers across the desert. The pyramids in the ancient valley of the Djel are flaring

their power into the night.

The energy streaming up from their paracosmic peaks may, in chapters to come,

illuminate many mysteries: why tortoises hate philosophy, why too much religion is bad for goats,

and what it is that handmaidens actually do.

It will certainly show what our ancestors would be thinking if they were alive today.

People have often speculated about this. Would they approve of modern society, they ask, would

they marvel at present-day achievements? And of course this misses a fundamental point. What

our ancestors would really be thinking, if they were alive today, is: 'Why is it so dark in here?'

In the cool of the river valley dawn the high priest Dios opened his eyes. He didn't sleep these

days. He couldn't remember when he last slept. Sleep was too close to the other thing and,

anyway, he didn't seem to need it. Just lying down was enough - at least, just lying down here.

The fatigue poisons dwindled away, like everything else. For a while.

Long enough, anyway.

He swung his legs off the slab in the little chamber. With barely a conscious prompting

from his brain his right hand grasped the snake-entwined staff of office. He paused to make

another mark on the wall, pulled his robe around him and stepped smartly down the sloping

passage and out into the sunlight, the words of the Invocation of the New Sun already lining up

in his mind. The night was forgotten, the day was ahead. There was much careful advice and

guidance to be given, and Dios existed only to serve.

Dios didn't have the oddest bedroom in the world. It was just the oddest bedroom

anyone has ever walked out of.

And the sun toiled across the sky.

Many people have wondered why. Some people think a giant dung beetle pushes it. As

explanations go it lacks a certain technical edge, and has the added drawback that, as certain

circumstances may reveal, it is possibly correct.

It reached sundown without anything particularly unpleasant happening to it* (* Such as

being buried in the sand and having eggs laid in it.), and its dying rays chanced to shine in

through a window in the city of Ankh-Morpork and gleam off a mirror.

It was a full-length mirror. All assassins had a full-length mirror in their rooms, because it

would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them when you were badly dressed.

Teppic examined himself critically. The outfit had cost him his last penny, and was heavy

on the black silk. It whispered as he moved. It was pretty good.

At least the headache was going. It had nearly crippled him all day; he'd been in dread

of having to start the run with purple spots in front of his eyes.

He sighed and opened the black box and took out his rings and slipped them on. Another

box held a set of knives of Klatchian steel, their blades darkened with lamp black. Various

cunning and intricate devices were taken from velvet bags and dropped into pockets. A couple of

long-bladed throwing tlingo's were slipped into their sheaths inside his boots. A thin silk line and

folding grapnel were wound around his waist, over the chain-mail shirt. A blowpipe was attached

to its leather thong and dropped down his back under his cloak; Teppic pocketed a slim tin

container with an assortment of darts, their tips corked and their stems braille-coded for ease of

selection in the dark.

He winced, checked the blade of his rapier and slung the baldric over his right shoulder,

to balance the bag of lead slingshot ammunition. As an afterthought he opened his sock drawer

and took a pistol crossbow, a flask of oil, a roll of lockpicks and, after some consideration, a

punch dagger, a bag of assorted caltraps and a set of brass knuckles.

Teppic picked up his hat and checked its lining for the coil of cheesewire. He placed it on

his head at a jaunty angle, took a last satisfied look at himself in the mirror, turned on his heel

and, very slowly, fell over.

It was high summer in Ankh-Morpork. In fact it was more than high. It was stinking.

The great river was reduced to a lava-like ooze between Ankh, the city with the better

address, and Morpork on the opposite bank. Morpork was not a good address. Morpork was

twinned with a tar pit. There was not a lot that could be done to make Morpork a worse place. A

direct hit by a meteorite, for example, would count as gentrification.

Most of the river bed was a honeycomb crust of cracked mud. Currently the sun

appeared to be a big copper gong nailed to the sky. The heat that had dried up the river fried the

city by day and baked it by night, curling ancient timbers, turning the traditional slurry of the

streets into a drifting, choking ochre dust.

It wasn't Ankh-Morpork's proper weather. It was by inclination a city of mists and drips,

of slithers and chills. It sat panting on the crisping plains like a toad on a firebrick. And even now,

around midnight, the heat was stifling, wrapping the streets like scorched velvet, searing the air

and squeezing all the breath out of it.

High in the north face of the Assassins' Guildhouse there was a click as a window was

pushed open.

Teppic, who had with considerable reluctance divested himself of some of the heavier of

his weapons, took a deep draught of the hot, dead air.

This was it.

This was the night.

They said you had one chance in two unless you drew old Mericet as examiner, in which

case you might as well cut your throat right at the start.

Teppic had Mericet for Strategy and Poison Theory every Thursday afternoon, and didn't

get along with him. The dormitories buzzed with rumours about Mericet, the number of kills, the

astonishing technique . . . He'd broken all the records in his time. They said he'd even killed the

Patrician of Ankh-Morpork. Not the present one, that is. One of the dead ones.

Maybe it would be Nivor, who was fat and jolly and liked his food and did Traps and

Deadfalls on Tuesdays. Teppic was good at traps, and got on well with the master. Or it could be

the Kompt de Yoyo, who did Modern Languages and Music. Teppic was gifted at neither, but the

Kompt was a keen edificeer and liked boys who shared his love of dangling by one hand high

above the city streets.

He stuck one leg over the sill and unhitched his line and grapnel. He hooked the gutter

two floors up and slipped out of the window.

No assassin ever used the stairs.

In order to establish continuity with later events, this may be the time to point out that the

greatest mathematician in the history of the Discworld was lying down and peacefully eating his

supper.

It is interesting to note that, owing to this mathematician's particular species, what he

was eating for his supper was his lunch.

Gongs around the Ankh-Morpork sprawl were announcing midnight when Teppic crept along the

ornate parapet four storeys above Filigree Street, his heart pounding.

There was a figure outlined against the afterglow of the sunset. Teppic paused alongside

a particularly repulsive gargoyle to consider his options.

Fairly solid classroom rumour said that if he inhumed his examiner before the test, that

was an automatic pass. He slipped a Number Three throwing knife from its thigh sheath and

hefted it thoughtfully. Of course, any attempt, any overt move which missed would attract

immediate failure and loss of privileges*. (* Breathing, for a start.)

The silhouette was absolutely still. Teppic's eyes swivelled to the maze of chimneys, gargoyles,

ventilator shafts, bridges and ladders that made up the rooftop scenery of the city.

Right, he thought. That's some sort of dummy. I'm supposed to attack it and that means

he's watching me from somewhere else.

Will I be able to spot him? No.

On the other hand, maybe I'm meant to think it's a dummy. Unless he's thought of that

as well . . .

He found himself drumming his fingers on the gargoyle, and hastily pulled himself

together. What is the sensible course of action at this point?

A party of revellers staggered through a pool of light in the street far below.

Teppic sheathed the knife and stood up.

'Sir,' he said, 'I am here.'

A dry voice by his ear said, rather indistinctly, 'Very well.'

Teppic stared straight ahead. Mericet appeared in front of him, wiping grey dust off his

bony face. He took a length of pipe out of his mouth and tossed it aside, then pulled a clipboard

out of his coat. He was bundled up even in this heat. Mericet was the kind of person who could

freeze in a volcano.

'Ah,' he said, his voice broadcasting disapproval, 'Mr. Teppic. Well, well.'

'A fine night, sir,' said Teppic. The examiner gave him a chilly look, suggesting that

observations about the weather acquired an automatic black mark, and made a note on his

clipboard.

'We'll take a few questions first,' he said.

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