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“How it's going to end for everybody else I don't know,” said Rincewind grimly, dragging him down the tunnel. “I know how it's going to end for me.”
He stepped out in to the dawn light, which was fine. Where he went wrong was stepping into a semi-circle of Tezumen. They had spears. They had exquisitely chipped obsidian spearheads, which, like their swords, were nowhere near as sophisticated as ordinary, coarse, inferior steel weapons. Was it better to know that you were going to be skewered by delicate examples of genuine ethnic origin rather than nasty forge-made items hammered out by people not in contact with the cycles of nature?
Probably not, Rincewind decided.
“I always say,” said da Quirm, “that there is a good side to everything.”
Rincewind, trussed to the next slab, turned his head with difficulty. “Where is it at the moment, precisely?” he said. Da Quirm squinted down across the swamps and the forest roof. “Well. It's a first-class view from up here, to begin with.” “Oh, good,” said Rincewind. "You know, I never would have looked at it like that.
You're absolutely right. It's the kind of view you'll remember for the rest of your life, I expect. I mean, it's not as if it will be any great feat of recollection.“ ”There's no need to be sarcastic. I was only passing a remark."
“I want my mum,” said Eric, from the middle slab. “Chin up, lad,” said da Quirm. “At least you're being sacrificed for something worthwhile. I just suggested they tried using the wheels upright, so they'd roll. I'm afraid they're not very responsive to new ideas around here. Still, nil desperandum. Where there's life there's hope.”
Rincewind growled. If there was one thing he couldn't stand, it was people who were fearless in the face of death. It seemed to strike at something absolutely fundamental in him.
“In fact,” said da Quirm, “I think -” He rolled from side to side experimentally, tugging at the vines which were holding him down. “Yes, I think when they did these ropes up -yes, definitely, they -”
“What? What?” said Rincewind.
“Yes, definitely,” said da Quirm. “I'm absolutely sure about it. They did them up very tightly and professionally. Not an inch of give in them anywhere.” “Thank you,” said Rincewind. The flat top of the truncated pyramid was in fact quite large, with plenty of room for
statues, priests, slabs, gutters, knife-chipping production lines and all the other things the
Tezumen needed for the bulk disposal of religion. In front of Rincewind several priests were busily chanting a long list of complaints about swamps, mosquitoes, lack of metal ore, volcanoes, the weather, the way obsidian never kept it's edge, the trouble with having a god like Quezovercoatl, the way wheels never worked properly however often you laid them flat and pushed them, and so on.
The prayers of most religions generally praise and thank the gods involved, either out of general piety or in the hope that he or she will take the hint and start acting responsibly. The Tezumen, having taken a long hard look around their world and decided bluntly that things were just about as bad as they were ever going to get, had perfected the art of the plain-chant winge.
“Won't be long now,” said the parrot, from its perch atop a statue of one of the Tezumen's lesser gods.
It had got there by a complicated sequence of events that had involved a lot of squawking, a cloud of feathers and three Tezumen priests with badly swollen thumbs.
“The high priest is just performing a wossname in honour of Quezovercoatl,” it went on, conversationally. “You've drawn quite a crowd.”
“I suppose you wouldn't kind of hop down here and bite through these ropes, would you?” said Rincewind.
“Not a chance.”
“Thought so.”
“Sun's coming up soon,” the parrot continued. Rincewind felt that it sounded unnecessarily cheerful.
“I'm going to complain about this, demon,” moaned Eric. “You wait my mother finds out. My parents have got influence, you know.”
“Oh, good,” said Rincewind weakly. “Why don't you tell the high priest that if he cuts your heart out she'll be right down to the school tomorrow to complain.”
The Tezumen priests bowed towards the sun, and all eyes in the crowd below turned to the jungle.
Where something was happening. There was the sound of crackling undergrowth. Tropical birds erupted through the trees, shrieking.
Rincewind, of course, could not see this.
“You never should have wanted to be ruler of the world,” he said. “I mean, what did you expect? You can't expect people to be happy about seeing you. No-one ever is when the landlord turns up.”
“But they're going to kill me!”
“It's just their way of saying that, metaphorically, they're fed up with waiting for you to repaint the place and see to the drains.”
The whole jungle was in uproar now. Animals exploded out of the bushes as if running from a fire. A few heavy thumps indicated that trees were falling over.
