The Discworld Series (№7) - Pyramids

Hacked into the doorseal, angular and deep, were the hieroglyphs of the Kingdom: KHUFT HAD ME MADE. THE FIRST.

Several ancestors clustered around it.

'Oh dear,' said the king. 'This might be going too far.'

'The First,' whispered Dil. 'The First into the Kingdom: No— one here before but hippos and crocodiles. From inside that pyramid seventy centuries look out at us. Older than anything-'

'Yes, yes, all right,' said Teppicymon. 'No need to get carried away. He was a man, just like all of us.'

'"AndKhuftthecamelherderlookeduponthevalley. . ."' Dil began.

'After seven thousand yeares, he wyll be wantyng to look upon yt again,' said Ashk-ur-men-tep bluntly.

'Even so,' said the king. 'It does seem a bit . .

'The dead are equal,' said Ashk-ur-men-tep. 'You, younge manne. Calle hym forth.'

'Who, me?' said Gern. 'But he was the Fir-'

'Yes, we've been through all that,' said Teppicymon. 'Do it. Everyone's getting impatient. So is he, I expect.'

Gern rolled his eyes, and hefted the hammer. Just as it was about to hiss down on the seal Dil darted forward, causing Gern to dance wildly across the ground in a groin-straining effort to avoid interring the hammer in his master's head.

'It's open!' said Dil. 'Look! The seal just swings aside!'

'Youe meane he iss oute?'

Teppicymon tottered forward and grabbed the door of the pyramid. It moved quite easily. Then he examined the stone beneath it. Derelict and half-covered though it was, someone had taken care to keep a pathway clear to the pyramid. And the stone was quite worn away, as by the passage of many feet.

This was not, by the nature of things, the normal state of affairs for a pyramid. The whole point was that once you were in, you were in.

The mummies examined the worn entrance and creaked at one another in surprise. One of the very ancient ones, who was barely holding himself together, made a noise like deathwatch beetle finally conquering a rotten tree.

'What'd he say?' said Teppicymon.

The mummy of Ashk-ur-men-tep translated. 'He saide yt ys Spooky,' he croaked.

The late king nodded. 'I'm going in to have a look. You two live ones, you come with me.'

Dil's face fell.

'Oh, come on, man,' snapped Teppicymon, forcing the door back. 'Look, I'm not frightened. Show a bit of backbone. Everyone else is.'

'But we'll need some light,' protested Dil.

The nearest mummies lurched back sharply as Gern timidly took a tinderbox out of his pocket.

'We'll need something to burn,' said Dil. The mummies shuffled further back, muttering.

'There's torches in here,' said Teppicymon, his voice slightly muffled. 'And you can keep them away from me, lad.'

It was a small pyramid, mazeless, without traps, just a stone passage leading upwards. Tremulously, expecting at any moment to see unnamed terrors leap out at them, the embalmers followed the king into a small, square chamber that smelled of sand. The roof was black with soot.

There was no sarcophagus within, no mummy case, no terror named or nameless. The centre of the floor was occupied by a raised block, with a blanket and a pillow on it.

Neither of them looked particularly old. It was almost disappointing.

Gern craned to look around.

'Quite nice, really,' he said. 'Comfy.'

'No,' said Dil.

'Hey, master king, look here,' said Gern, trotting over to one of the walls. 'Look. Someone's been scratching things. Look, all little lines all over the wall.'

'And this wall,' said the king, 'and the floor. Someone's been counting. Every ten have been crossed through, you see. Someone's been counting things. Lots of things.' He stood back.

'What things?' said Dil, looking behind him.

'Very strange,' said the king. He leaned forward. 'You can barely make out the inscriptions underneath.'

'Can you read it, king?' said Gern, showing what Dil considered to be unnecessary enthusiasm.

'No. It's one of the really ancient dialects. Can't make out a blessed hieroglyph,' said Teppicymon. 'I shouldn't think there's a single person alive today who can read it.'

'That's a shame,' said Gern.

'True enough,' said the king, and sighed. They stood in gloomy silence.

'So perhaps we could ask one of the dead ones?' said Gern.

'Er. Gern,' said Dil, backing away.

The king slapped the apprentice on the back, pitching him forward.

'Damn clever idea!' he said. 'We'll just go and get one of the real early ancestors. Oh.' He sagged. 'That's no good. No-one will be able to understand them-'

'Gern!' said Dil, his eyes growing wider.

'No, it's all right, king,' said Gern, enjoying the new-found freedom of thought, 'because, the reason being, everyone understands someone, all we have to do is sort them out.'

'Bright lad. Bright lad,' said the king.

'Gern!'

They both looked at him in astonishment.

'You all right, master?' said Gern. 'You've gone all white.'

'The t-' stuttered Dil, rigid with terror.

'The what, master?'

'The t— look at the t-'

'He ought to have a lie down,' said the king. 'I know his sort. The artistic type. Highly strung.'

Dil took a deep breath.

'Look at the sodding torch, Gern!' he shouted.

They looked.

Without any fuss, turning its black ashes into dry straw, the torch was burning backwards.

The Old Kingdom lay stretched out before Teppic, and it was unreal.

He looked at You Bastard, who had stuck his muzzle in a wayside spring and was making a noise like the last drop in the milkshake glass27. You Bastard looked real enough. There's nothing like a camel for looking really solid. But the landscape had an uncertain quality, as if it hadn't quite made up its mind to be there or not.

Except for the Great Pyramid. It squatted in the middle distance as real as the pin that nails a butterfly to a board. It was contriving to look extremely solid, as though it was sucking all the solidity out of the landscape into itself.

Well, he was here. Wherever here was.

How did you kill a pyramid?

And what would happen if you did?

He was working on the hypothesis that everything would snap back into place. Into the Old Kingdom's pool of recirculated time.

He watched the gods for a while, wondering what the hell they were, and how it didn't seem to matter. They looked no more real than the land over which they strode, about incomprehensible errands of their own. The world was no more than a dream. Teppic felt incapable of surprise. If seven fat cows had wandered by, he wouldn't have given them a second glance.

He remounted You Bastard and rode him, sloshing gently, down the road. The fields on either side had a devastated look.

The sun was finally sinking; the gods of night and evening were prevailing over the daylight gods, but it had been a long struggle and, when you thought about all the things that would happen to it now — eaten by goddesses, carried on boats under the world, and so on — it was an odds-on chance that it wouldn't be seen again.

No-one was visible as he rode into the stable yard. You Bastard padded sedately to his stall and pulled delicately at a wisp of hay. He'd thought of something interesting about bivariant distributions.

Teppic patted him on the flank, raising another cloud, and walked up the wide steps that led to the palace proper. Still there were no guards, no servants. No living soul.

He slipped into his own palace like a thief in the day, and found his way to Dil's workshop. It was empty, and looked as though a robber with very peculiar tastes had recently been at work in there. The throne room smelled like a kitchen, and by the looks of it the cooks had fled in a hurry.

The gold mask of the kings of Djelibeybi, slightly buckled out of shape, had rolled into a corner. He picked it up and, on a suspicion, scratched it with one of his knives. The gold peeled away, exposing a silver-grey gleam.

He'd suspected that. There simply wasn't that much gold around. The mask felt as heavy as lead because, well, it was lead. He wondered if it had ever been all gold, and which ancestor had done it, and how many pyramids it had paid for. It was probably very symbolic of something or other. Perhaps not even symbolic of anything. Just symbolic, all by itself.

One of the sacred cats was hiding under the throne. It flattened its ears and spat at Teppic as he reached down to pat it. That much hadn't changed, at least.

Still no people. He padded across to the balcony.

And there the people were, a great silent mass, staring across the river in the fading, leaden light. As Teppic watched a flotilla of boats and ferries set out from the near bank.

We ought to have been building bridges, he thought. But we said that would be shackling the river.

He dropped lightly over the balustrade on to the packed earth and walked down to the crowd.

And the full force of its belief scythed into him.

The people of Djelibeybi might have had conflicting ideas about their gods, but their belief in their kings had been unswerving for thousands of years. To Teppic it was like walking into a vat of alcohol. He felt it pouring into him until his fingertips crackled, rising up through his body until it gushed into his brain, bringing not omnipotence but the feeling of omnipotence, the very strong sensation that while he didn't actually know everything, he would do soon and had done once.

It had been like this back in Ankh, when the divinity had hooked him. But that had been just a flicker. Now it had the solid power of real belief behind it.

He looked down at a rustling below him, and saw green shoots springing out of the dry sand around his feet.

Bloody hell, he thought. I really am a god.

This could be very embarrassing.

He shouldered his way through the press of people until he reached the riverbank and stood there in a thickening clump of corn. As the crowd caught on, those nearest fell to their knees, and a circle of reverentially collapsing people spread out from Teppic like ripples.

But I never wanted this! I just wanted to help people live more happily, with plumbing. I wanted something done about rundown inner-city areas. I just wanted to put them at their ease, and ask them how they enjoyed their lives. I thought schools might be a good idea, so they wouldn't fall down and worship someone just because he's got green feet.

And I wanted to do something about the architecture… As the light drained from the sky like steel going cold the pyramid was somehow even bigger than before. If you had to design something to give the very distinct impression of mass, the pyramid was It. There was a crowd of figures around it, unidentifiable in the grey light.

Teppic looked around the prostrate crowd until he saw someone in the uniform of the palace guard.

'You, man, on your feet,' he commanded.

The man gave him a look of dread, but did stagger sheepishly upright.

'What's going on here?'

'O king, who is the lord of-'

'I don't think we have time,' said Teppic. 'I know who I am, I want to know what's happening.'

'O king, we saw the dead walking! The priests have gone to talk to them.'

'The dead walking?'

'Yes, O king.'

'We're talking about not-alive people here, are we?'

'Yes, O king.'

'Oh. Well, thank you. That was very succinct. Not informative, but succinct. Are there any boats around?'

'The priests took them all, O king.'

Teppic could see that this was true. The jetties near the palace were usually thronged with boats, and now they were all empty. As he stared at the water it grew two eyes and a long snout, to remind him that swimming the Djel was as feasible as nailing fog to the wall.

He stared at the crowd. Every person was watching him expectantly, convinced that he would know what to do next.

He turned back to the river, extended his hands in front of him, pressed them together and then opened them gently. There was a damp sucking noise, and the waters of the Djel parted in front of him. There was a sigh from the crowd, but their astonishment was nothing to the surprise of a dozen or so crocodiles, who were left trying to swim in ten feet of air.

Teppic ran down the bank and over the heavy mud, dodging to avoid the tails that slashed wildly at him as the reptiles dropped heavily on to the riverbed.

The Djel loomed up as two khaki walls, so that he was running along a damp and shadowy alley. Here and there were fragments of bones, old shields, bits of spear, the ribs of boats. He leapt and jinked around the debris of centuries.

Ahead of him a big bull crocodile propelled itself dreamily out of the wall of water, flailed madly in mid-air, and flopped into the ooze. Teppic trod heavily on its snout and plunged on.

Behind him a few of the quicker citizens, seeing the dazed creatures below them, began to look for stones. The crocodiles had been undisputed masters of the river since primordial times, but if it was possible to do a little catching-up in the space of a few minutes, it was certainly worth a try.

The sound of the monsters of the river beginning the long journey to handbaghood broke out behind Teppic as he sloshed up the far bank.

A line of ancestors stretched across the chamber, down the dark passageway, and out into the sand. It was filled with whispers going in both directions, a dry sound, like the wind blowing through old paper.

Dil lay on the sand, with Gern flapping a cloth in his face.

'Wha' they doing?' he murmured.

'Reading the inscription,' said Gern. 'You ought to see it, master! The one doing the reading, he's practically a-'

'Yes, yes, all right,' said Dil, struggling up.

'He's more than six thousand years old! And his grandson's listening to him, and telling his grandson, and he's telling his gra-'

'Yes, yes, all-'

'"And Khuft-too-said-Unto-the-First, What-may-We-Give-Unto— You, Who-Has-Taught-Us-the-Right-Ways»,' said Teppicymon28, who was at the end of the line. '"And-the-First-Spake, and-This-He-Spake, Build— for-Me-a-Pyramid, That-I-May-Rest, and-Build-it-of-These— Dimensions, That-it-Be-Proper. And-Thus-It-Was-Done, and-The-Name— of-the-First-was . . ."'

But there was no name. It was just a babble of raised voices, arguments, ancient cursewords, spreading along the line of desiccated ancestors like a spark along a powder trail. Until it reached Teppicymon, who exploded.

The Ephebian sergeant, quietly perspiring in the shade, saw what he had been half expecting and wholly dreading. There was a column of dust on the opposite horizon. The Tsorteans' main force was getting there first.

He stood up, nodded professionally to his counterpart across the way, and looked at the double handful of men under his command.

'I need a messenger to take, er, a message back to the city,' he said. A forest of hands shot up. The sergeant sighed, and selected young Autocue, who he knew was missing his mum.

'Run like the wind,' he said. 'Although I expect you won't need telling, will you? And then . . . and then . .

He stood with his lips moving silently, while the sun scoured the rocks of the hot, narrow pass and a few insects buzzed in the scrub bushes. His education hadn't included a course in Famous Last Words.

He raised his eyes in the direction of home.

'Go, tell the Ephebians-' he began.

The soldiers waited.

'What?' said Autocue after a while. 'Go and tell them what?'

The sergeant relaxed, like air being let out of a balloon.

'Go and tell them, what kept you?' he said. On the near horizon another column of dust was advancing.

This was more like it. If there was going to be a massacre, then it ought to be shared by both sides.

The city of the dead lay before Teppic. After Ankh-Morpork, which was almost its direct opposite (in Ankh, even the bedding was alive) it was probably the biggest city on the Disc; its streets were the finest, its architecture the most majestic and awe— inspiring.

In population terms the necropolis outstripped the other cities of the Old Kingdom, but its people didn't get out much and there was nothing to do on Saturday nights.

Until now.

Now it thronged:

Teppic watched from the top of a wind-etched obelisk as the grey and brown, and here and there somewhat greenish, armies of the departed passed beneath him. The kings had been democratic. After the pyramids had been emptied gangs of them had turned their attention to the lesser tombs, and now the necropolis really did have its tradesmen, its nobles and even its artisans. Not that there was, by and large, any way of telling the difference.

They were, to a corpse, heading for the Great Pyramid. It loomed like a carbuncle over the lesser, older buildings. And they all seemed very angry about something.

Teppic dropped lightly on to the wide flat roof of a mastaba, jogged to its far end, cleared the gap on to an ornamental sphinx

— not without a moment's worry, but this one seemed inert enough — and from there it was but the throw of a grapnel to one of the lower storeys of a step pyramid. The long light of the contentious sun lanced across the spent landscape as he leapt from monument to monument, zig-zagging high above the shuffling army.

Behind him shoots appeared briefly in the ancient stone, cracking it a little, and then withered and died.

This, said his blood as it tingled around his body, is what you trained for. Even Mericet couldn't mark you down for this. Speeding in the shadows above a silent city, running like a cat, finding handholds that would have perplexed a gecko — and, at the destination, a victim.

True, it was a billion tons of pyramid, and hitherto the largest client of an inhumation had been Patricio, the 23-stone Despot of Quirm.

A monumental needle recording in bas-relief the achievements of a king four thousand years ago, and which would have been more pertinent if the wind-driven sand hadn't long ago eroded his name, provided a handy ladder which needed only an expertly thrown grapnel from its top, lodging in the outstretched fingers of a forgotten monarch, to allow him a long, gentle arc on to the roof of a tomb.

Running, climbing and swinging, hastily hammering crampons in the memorials of the dead, Teppic went forth.

Pinpoints of firelight among the limestone pricked out the lines of the opposing armies. Deep and stylised though the enmity was between the two empires, they both abided by the ancient tradition that warfare wasn't undertaken at night, during harvest or when wet. It was important enough to save up for special occasions. Going at it hammer and tongs just reduced the whole thing to a farce.

In the twilight on both sides of the line came the busy sound of advanced woodwork in progress.

It's said that generals are always ready to fight the last War over again. It had been thousands of years since the last war between Tsort and Ephebe, but generals have long memories and this time they were ready for it.

On both sides of the line, wooden horses were taking shape.

'It's gone,' said Ptaclusp IIb, slithering back down the pile of rubble.

'About time, too,' said his father. 'Help me fold up your brother. You're sure it won't hurt him?'

'Well, if we do it carefully he can't move in Time, that is, width to us. So if no time can pass for him, nothing can hurt him.'

Ptaclusp thought of the old days, when pyramid building had simply consisted of piling one block on another and all you needed to remember was that you put less on top as you went up. And now it meant trying to put a crease in one of your sons.

'Right,' he said doubtfully. 'Let's be off, then.' He inched his way up the debris and poked his head over the top just as the vanguard of the dead came round the corner of the nearest minor pyramid.

His first thought was: this is it, they're coming to complain. He'd done his best. It wasn't always easy to build to a budget. Maybe not every lintel was exactly as per drawings, perhaps the quality of the internal plasterwork wasn't always up to snuff, but . . .

They can't all be complaining. Not this many of them.

Ptaclusp IIb climbed up alongside him. His mouth dropped open.

'Where are they all coming from?' he said.

'You're the expert. You tell me.

'Are they dead?'

Ptaclusp scrutinised some of the approaching marchers.

'If they're not, some of them are awfully ill,' he said.

'Let's make a run for it!'

'Where to? Up the pyramid?'

The Great Pyramid loomed up behind them, its throbbing filling the air. Ptaclusp stared at it.

'What's going to happen tonight?' he said.

'What?'

'Well, is it going to — do whatever it did — again?'

IIb stared at him. 'Dunno.'

'Can you find out?'

'Only by waiting. I'm not even sure what it's done now.

'Are we going to like it?'

'I shouldn't think so, dad. Oh, dear.'

'What's up now?'

'Look over there.'

Heading towards the marching dead, trailing behind Koomi like a tail behind a comet, were the priests.

It was hot and dark inside the horse. It was also very crowded.

They waited, sweating.

Young Autocue stuttered: 'What'll happen now, sergeant?'

The sergeant moved a foot tentatively. The atmosphere would have induced claustrophobia in a sardine.

'Well, lad. They'll find us, see, and be so impressed they'll drag us all the way back to their city, and then when it's dark we'll leap out and put them to the sword. Or put the sword to them. One or the other. And then we'll sack the city, bum the walls and sow the ground with salt. You remember, lad, I showed you on Friday.'

'Oh.'

Moisture dripped from a score of brows. Several of the men were trying to compose a letter home, dragging styli across wax that was close to melting.

'And then what will happen, sergeant?'

'Why, lad, then we'll go home heroes.'

'Oh.'

The older soldiers sat stolidly looking at the wooden walls. Autocue shifted uneasily, still worried about something.

'My mum said to come back with my shield or on it, sergeant,' he said.

'Jolly good, lad. That's the spirit.'

'We will be all right, though. Won't we, sergeant?'

The sergeant stared into the fetid darkness.

After a while, someone started to play the harmonica.

Ptaclusp half-turned his head from the scene and a voice by his ear said, 'You're the pyramid builder, aren't you?'

Another figure had joined them in their bolthole, one who was black-clad and moved in a way that made a cat's tread sound like a one-man band.

Ptaclusp nodded, unable to speak. He had had enough shocks for one day.

'Well, switch it off. Switch it off now.'

IIb leaned over.

'Who're you?' he said.

'My name is Teppic.'

'What, like the king?'

'Yes. Just like the king. Now turn it off.'

'It's a pyramid! You can't turn off pyramids!' said IIb.

'Well, then, make it flare.'

'We tried that last night.' IIb pointed to the shattered capstone. 'Unroll Two-Ay, dad.'

Teppic regarded the flat brother.

'It's some sort of wall poster, is it?' he said eventually.

IIb looked down. Teppic saw the movement, and looked down also; he was ankle-deep in green sprouts.

'Sorry,' he said. 'I can't seem to shake it off.'

'It can be dreadful,' said IIb frantically. 'I know how it is, I had this verruca once, nothing would shift it.'

Teppic hunkered down by the cracked stone.

'This thing,' he said. 'What's the significance? I mean, it's coated with metal. Why?'

'There's got to be a sharp point for the flare,' said IIb.

'Is that all? This is gold, isn't it?'

'It's electrum. Gold and silver alloy. The capstone has got to be made of electrum.'

Teppic peeled back the foil.

'This isn't all metal,' he said mildly.

'Yes. Well,' said Ptaclusp. 'We found, er, that foil works just as well.'

'Couldn't you use something cheaper? Like steel?' Ptaclusp sneered. It hadn't been a good day, sanity was a distant memory, but there were certain facts he knew for a fact.

'Wouldn't last for more than a year or two,' he said. 'What with the dew and so forth. You'd lose the point. Wouldn't last more than two or three hundred times.'

Teppic leaned his head against the pyramid. It was cold, and it hummed. He thought he could hear, under the throbbing, a faint rising tone.

The pyramid towered over him. (IIb could have told him that this was because the walls sloped in at precisely 56 degrees, and an effect known as battering made the pyramid loom even higher than it really was. He probably would have used words like perspective and virtual height as well.

The black marble was glassy smooth. The masons had done well. The cracks between each silky panel were hardly wide enough to insert a knife. But wide enough, all the same.

'How about once?' he said.

Koomi chewed his fingernails distractedly.

'Fire,' he said. 'That'd stop them. They're very inflammable. Or water. They'd probably dissolve.'

'Some of them were destroying pyramids,' said the high priest of Juf, the Cobra-Headed God of Papyrus.

'People always come back from the dead in such a bad temper,' said another priest.

Koomi watched the approaching army in mounting bewilderment.

'Where's Dios?' he said.

The old high priest was pushed to the front of the crowd.

'What shall I say to them?' Koomi demanded.

It would be wrong to say that Dios smiled. It wasn't an action he often felt called upon to perform. But his mouth creased at the edges and his eyes went half-hooded.

'You could tell them,' he said, 'that new times demand new men. You could tell them that it is time to make way for younger people with fresh ideas. You could tell them that they are outmoded. You could tell them all that.'

'They'll kill me!'

'Would they be that anxious for your eternal company, I wonder?'

'You're still high priest!'

'Why don't you talk to them?' said Dios. 'Don't forget to tell them that they are to be dragged kicking and screaming into the Century of the Cobra.' He handed Koomi the staff. 'Or whatever this century is called,' he added.

Koomi felt the eyes of the assembled brethren and sistren upon him. He cleared his throat, adjusted his robe, and turned to face the mummies.

They were chanting something, one word, over and over again. He couldn't quite make it out, but it seemed to have worked them up into a rage.

He raised the staff, and the carved wooden snakes looked unusually alive in the flat light.

The gods of the Disc — and here is meant the great consensus gods, who really do exist in Dunmanifestin, their semi-detached Valhalla on the world's impossibly high central mountain, where they pass the time observing the petty antics of mortal men and organising petitions about how the influx of the Ice Giants has lowered property values in the celestial regions — the gods of Disc have always been fascinated by humanity's incredible ability to say exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time.

They're not talking here of such easy errors as 'It's perfectly safe', or 'The ones that growl a lot don't bite', but of simple little sentences which are injected into difficult situations with the same general effect as a steel bar dropped into the bearings of a 3,000 rpm, 660 megawatt steam turbine.

And connoisseurs of mankind's tendency to put his pedal extremity where his tongue should be are agreed that when the judges' envelopes are opened then Hoot Koomi's fine performance in 'Begone from this place, foul shades' will be a contender for all— time bloody stupid greeting.

The front row of ancestors halted, and were pushed forward a little by the press of those behind.

King Teppicymon XXVII, who by common consent among the other twenty-six Teppicymons was spokesman, lurched on alone and picked up the trembling Koomi by his arms.

'What did you say?' he said.

Koomi's eyes rolled. His mouth opened and shut, but his voice wisely decided not to come out.

Teppicymon pushed his bandaged face close to the priest's pointed nose.

'I remember you,' he growled. 'I've seen you oiling around the place. A bad hat, if ever I saw one. I remember thinking that.'

He glared around at the others.

'You're all priests, aren't you? Come to say sorry, have you? Where's Dios?'

The ancestors pressed forward, muttering. When you've been dead for hundreds of years, you're not inclined to feel generous to those people who assured you that you were going to have a lovely time. There was a scuffle in the middle of the crowd as King Psam-nut-kha, who had spent five thousand years with nothing to look at but the inside of a lid, was restrained by younger colleagues.

Teppicymon switched his attention back to Koomi, who hadn't gone anywhere.

'Foul shades, was it?' he said.

'Er,' said Koomi.

'Put him down.' Dios gently took the staff from Koomi's unresisting fingers and said, 'I am Dios, the high priest. Why are you here?'

It was a perfectly calm and reasonable voice, with overtones of concerned but indubitable authority. It was a tone of voice the pharaohs of Djelibeybi had heard for thousands of years, a voice which had regulated the days, prescribed the rituals, cut the time into carefully-turned segments, interpreted the ways of gods to men. It was the sound of authority, which stirred antique memories among the ancestors and caused them to look embarrassed and shuffle their feet.