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'It must make you feel really proud,' said Gern

'What?'

'Well, our , after all this stuffing and stitching Sort of in the Netherworld With your stitching in him'

And several sacks of straw and a couple of buckets of pitch, thought the shade of the king sadly And the wrapping off Gern's lunch, although he didn't blaotten where he'd put it All eternity with soans There had been half a sausage left, too

He'd become quite attached to Dil, and even to Gern He seemed still to be attached to his body, too - at least, he felt uncomfortable if he wandered more than a few hundred yards away from it - and so in the course of the last couple of days he'd learned quite a lot about them

Funny, really He'd spent the whole of his life in the kingdo to a few priests and so forth He knew objectively there had been other people around - servants and gardeners and so forth - but they figured in his life as blobs He was at the top, and then his family, and then the priests and the nobles of course, and then there were the blobs Damn fine blobs, of course, some of the finest blobs in the world, as loyal a collection of blobs as a king ht hope to rule But blobs, none the less

But noas absolutely engrossed in the daily details of Dil's shy hopes for advance story of Gern's cluhter who lived nearby He listened in fascinated astonishment to the elaboration of a world as full of subtle distinctions of grade and station as the one he had so recently left; it was terrible to think that he ht never know if Gern overcame her father's objections and won his intended, or if Dil's work on this job - on him - would allow hiree Variance of the Matron Lodge of the Guild of Embalmers and Allied Trades

It was as if death was so optical device which turned even a drop of water into a coe to counsel Dil on ele and looking respectable He tried it several times They could sense him, there was no doubt about that But they just put it down to draughts

Noatched Dil pad over to the big table of bandages, and coainst what even the king was now prepared to think of as his corpse

'I think the linen,' he said at last 'It's definitely his colour'

Gern put his head on one side

'He'd look good in the hessian,' he said 'Or maybe the calico'

'Not the calico Definitely not the calico On hi'

'He could moulder into it With wear, you know'

Dil snorted 'Wear? Wear? You shouldn't talk to me about calico and wear What happens if someone robs the tomb in a thousand years' time and him in calico, I'd like to know He'd lurch halfway down the corridor, rant you, but then he's coht? The elbows'll be out in no time, I'll never live it down'

'But you'll be dead, ot to do with it?' Dil riffled through the saive in it, hessian Good traction, too He'll really be able to lurch up speed in the passages, if he ever needs to'

The king sighed He'd have preferred soo and shut the door,' Dil added 'It's getting breezy in here'

'And now it's tih priest, 'for us to see our late father' He allowed hi forward to it,' he added

Teppic considered this It wasn't soet everyone'srelatives He reached down in what he hoped was a kingly fashion to stroke one of the palace cats This also was not a good move The creature sniffed it, went cross-eyed with the effort of thought, and then bit his fingers

'Cats are sacred,' said Dios, shocked at the words Teppic uttered

'Long-legged cats with silver fur and disdainful expressions are,his hand, 'I don't know about this sort I'm sure sacred cats don't leave dead ibises under the bed And I'm certain that sacred cats that live surrounded by endless sand don't co's sandals, Dios'

'All cats are cats,' said Dios, vaguely, and added, 'If ould be so gracious as to follow us' He motioned Teppic towards a distant arch

Teppic followed slowly He'd been back hoht The air was too dry The clothes felt wrong It was too hot Even the buildings see Back hos with little bunches of stone grapes and things around the top Here they were massive pear-shaped lumps, where all the stone had run to the bottom

Half a dozen servants trailed behind hialia

He tried to i back to him You turned your torso this way, then you turned your head this way, and extended your arrees to your body with the palh priest's staff raised echoes as it touched the flagstones A blindthe time-worn dimples it had created over the years

'I aed somewhat since we last saw him,' said Dios conversationally, as they undulated by the fresco of Queen Khaphut accepting Tribute frodoms of the World

'Well, yes,' said Teppic, bewildered by the tone 'He's dead, isn't he?'

'There's that, too,' said Dios, and Teppic realised that he hadn't been referring to so's current physical condition

He was lost in a horrified admiration It wasn't that Dios was particularly cruel or uncaring, it was si transition in the eternal business of existence The fact that people died was just an inconvenience, like thee world, he thought It's all busy shadows, and it never changes And I' to a particularly big fresco showing a talla chariot over a lot of other, much smaller, people

'His name is in the cartouche below,' said Dios primly

'What?'

'The small oval, sire,' said Dios

Teppic peered closely at the dense hieroglyphics

'"Thin eagle, eye, wiggly line, ly line",' he read Dios winced

'I believe we es,' he said, recovering a bit 'His na when the Djel Empire extends from the Circle Sea to the Rim Ocean, when almost half the continent pays tribute to us'

Teppic realised what it was about the e Dios would bend any sentence to breaking point if ita past tense He pointed to another fresco

'And her?' he said