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.
One of the younger pharaohs lurched forward.
'You bastard,' he croaked. 'You laid us out and shut us away, one by one, and you went on. People thought the name was passed on but it was always you. How old are you, Dios?'
There was no sound. No-one moved. A breeze stirred the dust a little.
Dios sighed.
'I did not mean to,' he said. 'There was so much to do. There were never enough hours in the day. Truly, I did not realise what was happening. I thought it was refreshing, nothing more, I suspected nothing. I noted the passing of the rituals, not the years.'
'Come from a long-lived family, do you?' said Teppicymon sarcastically.
Dios stared at him, his lips moving. 'Family,' he said at last, his voice softened from its normal bark. 'Family. Yes. I must have had a family, mustn't I. But, you know, I can't remember. Memory is the first thing that goes. The pyramids don't seem to preserve it, strangely.'
'This is Dios, the footnote-keeper of history?' said Teppicymon.
'Ah.' The high priest smiled. 'Memory goes from the head. But it is all around me. Every scroll and book.'
'That's the history of the kingdom, man!'
'Yes. My memory.'
The king relaxed a little. Sheer horrified fascination was unravelling the knot of fury.
'How old are you?' he said.
'I think... seven thousand years. But sometimes it seems much longer.'
'Really seven thousand years?'
'Yes,' said Dios.